I remember getting pissed that they (Bing, Google, doesn’t matter) put one “sponsored” link as the first result. It got me a few times before I started double checking URLs. Now the first page of results is practically useless ads not even related to the query most of the time. Fucking infuriating. Even Qwant will put multiple ads in if you search for a thing. I’m not biting the bullet for another subscription just yet, but paid Kagi lookin’ finer by the day.
I will never use Kagi because requiring an account makes associating search queries with you trivial, though I don’t doubt it is a useful service.
Mullvad Leta was nice while it lasted, but an easy replacement is DuckDuckGo HTML. As the name suggests, it doesn’t require JS, reducing the attack surface and routes of browser fingerprinting. I do acknowledge that the search results suck about as much as Google, so I need to be creative with search queries.
A better option is a self hosted meta search engine like SearXNG or 4get. I get that the branding of 4get is off-putting, but it doesn’t require JS for frontend and is much simpler/leaner/reliable than SearXNG. Self hosted search engines are also only useful (imho) if used by a large group (as a public instance) to blend in, or behind a VPN that rotates frequently. This is to avoid association to you.
Kagi optionally offers something called privacy pass where they can verify that the user is authorised to access it, but not which user it is: https://blog.kagi.com/kagi-privacy-pass
The AI stuff is putting me off though. I didn’t see an option to not subscribe to that. Hell, I’d pay the same rate just without the AI parts if I could.
Long term, if you want good privacy respecting services, you will need to pay for them directly. Free anything is not sustainable unless they monetize it by selling your data or serving you advertisements, which will lead to selling your data. If their revenue is dependent on you believing that the service is worth paying for, then they are incentivized to improve their service and maintain your trust.
The free tier high enough that you can get an idea of how well it works, but of course you’re not meant to stay on the free tier, it’s a trial.
I’m not talking about the free tier, I’m saying 300 searches a month for 5 bucks wasn’t worth it to me. I’m not willing to pay 120 a year for a search engine. One cent a search and they would have my five a month.
Oh yeah I didn’t even consider the base tier, I’d blow through the searches inside of a week.
For my part, it’s just enforcing something I’d do anyway, I’ve got monthly recurring donations of $5-10 for a bunch of open source projects that I find useful, particularly ones by solo devs, so, it’s not much of a stretch for me.
This seems reasonable to me, though perhaps not perfect. If you don’t want your money going towards ai development at all… IDK. I don’t think they train their own models for what it’s worth, so I think you can avoid paying ai companies by simply not using the ai parts of kagi.
I remember getting pissed that they (Bing, Google, doesn’t matter) put one “sponsored” link as the first result. It got me a few times before I started double checking URLs. Now the first page of results is practically useless ads not even related to the query most of the time. Fucking infuriating. Even Qwant will put multiple ads in if you search for a thing. I’m not biting the bullet for another subscription just yet, but paid Kagi lookin’ finer by the day.
I will never use Kagi because requiring an account makes associating search queries with you trivial, though I don’t doubt it is a useful service.
Mullvad Leta was nice while it lasted, but an easy replacement is DuckDuckGo HTML. As the name suggests, it doesn’t require JS, reducing the attack surface and routes of browser fingerprinting. I do acknowledge that the search results suck about as much as Google, so I need to be creative with search queries.
A better option is a self hosted meta search engine like SearXNG or 4get. I get that the branding of 4get is off-putting, but it doesn’t require JS for frontend and is much simpler/leaner/reliable than SearXNG. Self hosted search engines are also only useful (imho) if used by a large group (as a public instance) to blend in, or behind a VPN that rotates frequently. This is to avoid association to you.
Kagi optionally offers something called privacy pass where they can verify that the user is authorised to access it, but not which user it is: https://blog.kagi.com/kagi-privacy-pass
DDG is just Bing
but at least it allows me to disable ads and allegedly opt out of tracking
Main reason I like DDG is that it acts as a proxy (meaning I blend into crowd of all DDG users) and the HTML frontend doesn’t require JS or ads.
It uses Bing, when you use a search engine through an API you get more levers and dials to play with than an end user normally has
I did a side-by-side comparison with Bing from the browser and got identical results.
Agreed, just started using Kagi last week
The AI stuff is putting me off though. I didn’t see an option to not subscribe to that. Hell, I’d pay the same rate just without the AI parts if I could.
This is like not using Proton mail because they have VPN and office and drive and whatever else.
You don’t need to use any of it and it stays out of the way.
I was more annoyed by their base tier having such a low monthly search count. It feels low to purposefully push people to their higher tier.
Long term, if you want good privacy respecting services, you will need to pay for them directly. Free anything is not sustainable unless they monetize it by selling your data or serving you advertisements, which will lead to selling your data. If their revenue is dependent on you believing that the service is worth paying for, then they are incentivized to improve their service and maintain your trust.
The free tier high enough that you can get an idea of how well it works, but of course you’re not meant to stay on the free tier, it’s a trial.
I’m not talking about the free tier, I’m saying 300 searches a month for 5 bucks wasn’t worth it to me. I’m not willing to pay 120 a year for a search engine. One cent a search and they would have my five a month.
Oh yeah I didn’t even consider the base tier, I’d blow through the searches inside of a week.
For my part, it’s just enforcing something I’d do anyway, I’ve got monthly recurring donations of $5-10 for a bunch of open source projects that I find useful, particularly ones by solo devs, so, it’s not much of a stretch for me.
I’ve used kagi’s ai stuff like… twice, maybe. They are fully opt-in and unobtrusive. For reference, this is their ai philosophy: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/why-kagi/ai-philosophy.html
This seems reasonable to me, though perhaps not perfect. If you don’t want your money going towards ai development at all… IDK. I don’t think they train their own models for what it’s worth, so I think you can avoid paying ai companies by simply not using the ai parts of kagi.
ddg + adblock
you can disable ads in duckduckgo. it’s probably not the safest, but muscle memory is a bitch