(In the case that someone in Lemmy still use Google)

    • PoorPocketsMcNewHold@lemmy.ml
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      7 months ago

      If you believe Google is the most reliable, you can still use it in a private way via :

      • Startpage

      Startpage is a private search engine known for serving Google and Bing search results. One of Startpage’s unique features is the Anonymous View, which puts forth efforts to standardize user activity to make it more difficult to be uniquely identified. The feature can be useful for hiding some network and browser properties.

      https://www.startpage.com/

      SearXNG is an open-source, self-hostable, metasearch engine, aggregating the results of other search engines while not storing any information itself.

      There’s plenty of public instances too https://searx.space/

      Get Google search results, but without any ads, JavaScript, AMP links, cookies, or IP address tracking. Easily deployable in one click as a Docker app, and customizable with a single config file.

      Couple of public instances too. Basically SearxNG with ONLY google as a source. https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search#public-instances

        • squeakycat@lemmy.ml
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          7 months ago

          That’s fair. Like the sibling comment says, it’s worth it for me. But not everyone has the ability to pay.

          • RGB3x3@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Yeah, but $10 a month is a lot. And the $5 plan for only 300 searches a month goes by really fast if you have to do any kind of research for anything. Even for trying to figure out what brand of something to buy, you blow through those searches super quick.

                  • FutileRecipe@lemmy.world
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                    7 months ago

                    As you said, it’s hard to calculate an exact number. But if you think your search results are only worth $1/month, that’s up to you to determine. I know if I was an ad-broker or profiler, I’d pay more than $1/month/person as that’s valuable information, in my opinion. And Kagi is worth much more than that to me. Proton theorizes:

                    If Google Search market share is also 90% in the US, that’s over 274 million people using Google, and the company earns $393 per year from each of them.

                    Ref: https://proton.me/blog/what-is-your-data-worth

              • stewie3128@lemmy.ml
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                7 months ago

                They’ve said that it costs them 1.5 cents to answer a search query, so that dollar a month wouldn’t go very far. I probably incidentally run 40-50 searches a day between my devices… $10 is a value that works for me.

                I’ve been using Kagi as my default since June, and don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.

                • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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                  7 months ago

                  That sounds unlikely… But they’re a small search provider with a small customer base, so costs will be high maintaining all the infrastructure needed.

                  As I linked elsewhere, Bing makes ~$10 per user per year. That’s really close to my $1/month figure. And that’s revenue, which doesn’t count advertiser acquisition costs and whatnot.

                  I’m unwilling to pay $5/month for limited searches, but I’m willing to pay for search if it’s reasonable.

          • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            That doesn’t mean the price has to be the same as a fucking Netflix subscription.

            Which service uses more computation? Streaming HQ video to millions of people, or running a search engine. Keep in mind, search engines have existed since basically before the internet in some form or another…

            • stewie3128@lemmy.ml
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              7 months ago

              Well, it costs Kagi about 1.5 cents to answer a search query. Consider how many searches you use in a month to determine how much they’re making off you at $10/mo.

              I’m lucky enough to be in a position to be able to pay for products that I use, instead of relying on freemium, or ad-supported, or data-mined, or pirated products. That hasn’t always been the case for me, so I don’t judge anyone for making a different choice.

              • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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                7 months ago

                If they’re taking in less than 1000 searches of money for 3000 searches, the numbers still aren’t adding up. Someone is misinformed or the product still.

    • DDG queries can’t really be written the same way you’d write one in Google if you’re after effective results. It’ll take some time to get used to it, tbh I was using DDG alongside Google until I fully switched.

      • Pussista@sh.itjust.works
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        7 months ago

        I keep reading that Google’s search results are supposedly much better than DDG’s when my experience is the exact opposite. I don’t even live in an English speaking country and the results I get are a vast improvement over Google’s. It has been this way for me since at least last year, but in my experience DDG had caught up to Google in 2022 already. It could also be that Google has just deteriorated a lot in the last two years (which it definitely has, judging by all the bad publicity they’ve been getting for it), so I’d urge you to give DDG/Brave Search/Bing/Kagi/SearxNG another chance.

        I’d also recommend setting an alternative of your choice as the default everywhere and to use it exclusively for like a week before making up your mind about that specific product!

      • PunkiBas@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Whoa! You weren’t kidding about that list of search engines. What’s with the Germans and search engines? They sure do have a lot.

        • Zerush@lemmy.mlOP
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          7 months ago

          The author of th Thread is German, he icluded because of this also searches in German media sites or dictionaries. But if you want a German search engine, you can use MetaGer, not bad at all. Good privacy but freemium, in the free version there are ads, (context, anonymous) and limited on 2 search engines.

          • PunkiBas@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Hah! I in fact have been using metager for a couple of months now as my defult search engine, since I saw it recommended in Lemmy those 2 months ago. Works great. Tried kagi before but I just don’t search that much and paying per search makes much more sense to me.