I'm one of those people. It seems like all search engines give pretty similar results, so why not use the one with more privacy? I can even do a quick LLM ask on DDG and with different models. Helpful when search terms are not getting the right match.

I think most people's judgement about DDG is from a few uses and from some time ago. It's worth giving it a shot if you haven't in awhile. But give it a real shot, like use it for a few days to get over the "I hate it because it's different" game that our minds play.

And a major benefit now is you don't just get a fucking popup on your phone every time you're just trying to search something. Like seriously, wtf google. Needy much?

2.5% is a very small share

I will point out that on an iPhone this is not an easy switch, since Apple hardcodes the search engine options and you need to use a browser extension which hijacks your search from another engine to redirect it to Kagi.

Do us Kagi users have anything like a denonym? Some name we can use like "Kagi-ers" or "Kagools" - but much cooler-sounding, of course...

The web is also far worse than it used to be.

Content was so much better 15-20 years ago, when Google’s tooling was also better.

99% of content creators create content for a single reason: to monetize it. Usually through ads.

The end result is that most content, even if decent, is ruined by ads.

Agreed. It actually is pretty awful now. Unfortunately, I still find it better than the alternatives (chiefly Bing/DDG). Every time I want to try out DDG, I just find it doesn't quite get what I want either, and Google does just a bit better.

FWIW DDG offers a few LLMs and they have search capabilities. Makes it a bit convenient to switch over if one of the LLMs is being extra dumb that day.

It's a natural consequence of YouTube's practices unfortunately. If the majority of banned users are weird racists and the like, the majority of people looking for an alternative will be likewise.

The only other major market is weird tech nerds like us, but tbh, a lot of us would rather setup a peertube node then actually make any content for it.

> YouTube that isn't just filled with conservative conspiracy stuff

I often see people complaining about this; but it's just not something I ever experience myself (provided I'm using my account, of course). While I do cultivate my YouTube recommendations using the "Do not recommend again" menu item, I think I've only needed to click that a few times a year - plus most of the videos I watch are from video producers I'm subscribed to (mostly retrotech, sci/tech/edu youtubers and archive film accounts; I do subscribe to a bunch of defence-economics and political youtubers but only because they don't engage in theatrics: it's all very bookish and academic, so that also helps keep the bad content away.

...so if you're seeing extremist and/or conspiratorial content, may I ask if you're clicking the "Do not recommend" menu option (not just the Dislike button) - and have you built a Subscriptions list of consistently non-extremist content? I imagine those are the 2 main things that informs YouTube's recommendation algo.

Google has been denied this privilege. Where does it say others have as well?