It's also important to note that ChatGPT internet search and DuckDuckGo are experiencing similar issues because they use the Bing API.
UPDATE 2
this post was submitted on 23 May 2024
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Okay.
Now that we already know we are pretty much at the hands of one pupeteer, what options are there?
I already read about Kagi (apologies if mispelled) but I like to write as a hobby and 300 searches per month go fast.
What other options are there?
Edit:
For those who may be arriving now:
p.p.s Should I start categorizing these from "shady" to "worthy"?
p.p.s 2 Does anyone remember StumbleUpon? I know it was never a search engine to begin with but it was the best source of good internet content I ever got acquainted to.
Can we get something like that back?
SearXNG
This is the single most obnoxious name I've ever seen. But, the service could be good (I've never used it)
Basically the mother of all search engines. Merges Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, etc. into one.
it's a fork (Next Generation) of deprecated SearX project.
Mojeek is far from perfect, but also is 100% independent.
Thank you I tried Mojeek a few days ago but I forgot what it was called. the site for mojeek is mojeek.com btw.
Sometimes it's a hard one to remember 😅
That’s a nice hobby
I would suggest you to install a local instance of a LLM (mistral or llama3 for example) to widen your source of information. Go straight to Wikipedia instead of “googling” it if you don’t already.
Anyway, I didn’t know about kagi so I might take my own advice and give it a try.
How big are they, and what do I need to use them well?
Take a look at Ollama.ai, just follow the installation instructions. A decent GPU is recommended, and the models are around 10GB iirc.
Most of 7b-8b models run just fine in 4bits quant and won’t use more than 4 or 5 GB of VRAM.
The only important metric is the amount of VRAM as the model must be loaded in VRAM for fast inference.
You could use CPU and RAM but it is really painfully slow.
If you got an Apple Silicon Mac it could be even simpler.
I have an Intel Celeron Mobile laptop with iGPU and, I think, 256MB VRAM. How many bs does that get me for the LLM?
~~Only half-joking. That's my still functional old daily driver now serving as homelab~~
Well, I got a good news and a bad news.
The bad news is you won't do shit with that my dear friend.
The good news is that you won't need it because the duck is back.
There's also mojeek.com running their own index. Not perfect, but sometimes usable.
you can also send us in queries where we're not perfect, or let us know elsewhere, and we're keen on fixing them
That was unexpected, but welcome message. Thanks for caring.
There's a new search engine called Yep, made by the team at Ahrefs, a SEO tool SaaS.
It looks promising because they have their own index, but it's a bit slow sometimes.
ugh
I jumped back on ecosia. It's nice there, but I'm sure there are issues that a non tech person like me may not know about
Ecosia also uses Bing and was also down. That's the one I use.
Appreciate the edits
You're welcome.
Just letting you know kagi has a family plan with unlimited searches, so you can probably split it with family or friends! I have yet to see how searxng search holds up to kagi.
Was this news to you? Other than Google and Bing there aren't any other significant alternatives. Even brave is a bit limited.
You can't know everything.
Yes, I understand that, but still surprised. I thought it was well known that DDG used bing.
Today, I was the 1% getting to know something new.
if you just hate western companies, there's always yandex, supports more fringe contents as well, since russia moment.
But it's Russian.
yeah, but it is another option if you don't want to sell your data to big google. Plus it also has utility in other areas.
Worth consideration.
Hate requires too much emotional investment. What I want is options.
I run a searxng instance on my pi server, use it from all of my devices, honestly forget its a thing running from my office 99% of the time until I'm rebooting the pi for one reason or another and spend more seconds than I'd like to admit wondering why I can't run a search 🤣😅