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f4stjack 5 hours ago

Google does not hate us... it is worse than that - it is indifferent to us. Hate requires some sort of recognition. I mean this single incident may not mean anything but overall google is heading to an _interesting_ place. In short, it was state of the art but in 20 years it became just another conglomerate sacrificing quality for shareholder gain, I think?

As a search engine, it does not work for me. I see promoted links above the thing I actually search for. Moved to Kagi and didn't look back.

As an AI it does not work for me. I am seeing an arbitrary usage limit, refreshing in 5 hours and a weekly quota given in a percentage. That is as opaque as it gets. Again, to give Kagi as an example I look at my usage details and I see how much is remaining in a clear way. Not working for Kagi by the way, I am just a happy customer.

As a cloud storage, it does not work for me. Probably some shared folder I am working with others has a spam user and/or a hacked account and they periodically spam x-rated notifications. And that's not only me (https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/1azf25v/myster...). Moved to apple iCloud and done with it.

Mail is fine. After 22 years of usage, I kind of delegated it to a non-important stage in my life. The important bits have relocated to European providers anyway.

RankingMember 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I feel like a crazy person, but I've been using Yandex as the last resort and having positive results in finding stuff that I know is out there but Google has decided to stop letting me see. (I tried DDG but for my use it's been worse than Google).

siva7 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Nah you're not crazy. I also felt crazy when i discovered that some obscure censored russian search engine gives me overall better search results in 2026 than google.com

pooploop64 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is a funny (if it wasn't so sad) aspect of enshittification that was revealed to me through Chinese electronics.

There is a line we cross where the lowest quality, most bottom dollar crap is actually better than it's actively malicious "premium" counterparts.

It's like if a company spent billions of dollars creating the most perfect hammer that also happens to make itself bend to miss nails if you don't use the approved Hammertech GripGlove that plays ads and is slippery.

Or you could use a random rock with a flat side, which is a much better hammer than that in every way. In the exact same fashion, Yandex blows Google out of the water. Not because they have smarter people running it or because the code is more elegant or because they have more money. They just don't have the means or motivation to actively screw with you to the same degree as Google, and that makes it better.

Anyone at this point could make a better search engine than google just by running a basic text search algorithm and not doing anything else, it just so happens that Yandex never bothered to go as far beyond that as the mainstream ones.

alberto-m 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yandex is not obscure, nor “lowest quality, most bottom dollar crap”. It has very good technology behind, though not the trillion dollars of investments Google can afford. Just because it does not come from California it does not mean it's a hobby project anyone could replicate.

andrekandre 21 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

ttoinou 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yandex is big and has probably good engineers

amelius 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I suspect it has more to do with incentives.

ai_slop_hater 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's not "obscure." Yandex is Russia's Google.

seviu 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not crazy, I always resort to yandex when I know google is not showing me the results I am looking for

DDG doesn’t click for me sadly, and I cannot point my finger to where or why

kevin_thibedeau 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

DDG is repackaged Bing. Used to be Yandex too but sanctions put an end to that.

yegg 3 hours ago | parent [-]

We are significantly more than that at this point, including that we've been working on our own web index for the past two years (see https://insideduckduckgo.substack.com/p/duck-tales-why-duckd...). But on top of that we don't get local results, knowledge graph, answers, sports, anything AI related, and many more essential modules from Bing, all of which collectively makes up a large % of the results at this point, let alone the vastly different UXs.

throwway120385 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I stopped using DDG because whenever I search for information on a topic like "plumber's bread" all I get are the same 1500 sites serving the same top-10 lists of the same Amazon Affiliate links. Kagi neatly avoids all of that and serves me the dumb forum articles from 2006 that I'm looking for that describe what plumbers actually do when they want to stop up a wet pipe. This is a problem with nearly every ad-supported search engine. They all serve the same dumb top-10 lists and AI-authored blog articles about the same stuff ad-nauseum instead of inferring that I'm trying to research the answer to a question. The results all presuppose that I'm looking to buy something.

AussieWog93 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I never had this experience with Kagi, sadly. I know a lot of people here love it but I found it had the same problems as Google.

I wonder if it's a regional thing.

gtfiorentino 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I searched for “plumber’s bread” on DuckDuckGo and this was the 3rd result which seems to match what you’re looking for - https://www.finehomebuilding.com/forum/plumbers-bread-sandwi.... I do see the other kind of results you’re talking about too, though.

Cider9986 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I find DuckDuckGo's search results to be terrible. I use Brave search and I find it to be the best. I've also tried Startpage and I like it better than DDG, but less than Brave.

DDG often has scam sites for example when you search for FMHY, https://fmhy.net comes up on all other search engines, but fmhy [.] click comes up on DDG.

Same with "anna's archive" returning the fake site annas-archive [.]io.

gtfiorentino 2 hours ago | parent [-]

We’ll take a look at those two sites, thanks for reporting. We’re actively working to improve how we detect and remove scam sites, and getting specific reports is very helpful.

Cider9986 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Very cool, thanks.

Here is the list of all the official sites for FMHY (https://fmhy.net/other/backups)

I'm sure they would be happy with any combination of these 3.

1. fmhy.net

2. reddit.com/r/freemediaheckyeah

3. github.com/fmhy/FMHY

As for Anna's, it changes often, but it would be good to only allow the ones listed on the Wikipedia for sites that are posing to actually be Anna's Archive, rather than accessory sites like Github, link directories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna%27s_Archive#:~:text=URL,a...

annas-archive.pk

annas-archive.gd

annas-archive.gl

Cider9986 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

As for my allegation of terrible results. I think it mainly comes down to low quality sites being prioritized. I didn't want to make up search queries, so I decided to just go through my history to find my searches on Brave and compare the results with DDG.

"scientology speedrun instagram"

Brave returns mostly news articles in the main results and only a specific Instagram reel. Brave has an area for videos which is particularly relevant, but DDG has a carousel thing for news. DDG returns an Instagram and Tiktok area for the topic and an X account. Then Wikipedia and Knowyourmeme.

I would say DDG actually wins here because it is very much more on topic with the social media sites being resulted (X, IG, TikTok), but the results feel less clickable to me because those social media sites are so unfriendly to adblocking, VPN using, not-signed-in users.

"fisa news"

Brave shows a really nice variety of specific news article updates as well as primary sources like a .gov. DDG does similarly, but it's really only news and it is really a smattering of different mainstream news websites. That's fine, but then there's also that carosel which is 100% filled with Yahoo and Foxnews, which I consider both to be low-quality.

Another big problem with DDG in this specific search is there are quite a few simple links to news website's tag on fisa, which isn't helpful to me.

I'm not the happiest about either results, but Brave wins because of the lack of slop from yahoo as well as the primary source results.

who is the highest level scientologist who left

Neither DDG nor Brave returns any immediate actual answers in websites, but by automatically returning the AI summary, I get a satisfying answer from Brave's AI.

"sovereignty"

I was surprised, but DDG totally wins this one. Brave doesn't have that built in dictionary result, DDG does. Brave also has a news carosel which is not relevant. Pretty comparable with the other results, but definitely a win for DDG.

Actually, what's the deal with putting the "search assist" at the bottom. That's pretty weird.

I think a lot of my bias against DDG comes from the UI. Brave seems friendlier, rounder, easier to read.

Hopefully this helps.

gtfiorentino 17 minutes ago | parent [-]

Yes, super helpful, thanks. Hear you on the overall problem of lower-quality sites.

On the Assist question, it can appear at the bottom when we think it has a good answer but something else beats it. Curious what was weird about it? Just not expecting another answer?

stavros 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I use DDG as my daily driver and quite like it. Then again, I don't really see much difference between DDG and Kagi, so I may be some sort of pleb. I will say that, sometimes, DDG gets "stuck" on certain sorts of close-phrase matches, rather than showing me the thing I'm looking for, but I've learned to recognize that behavior and append !g to it.

yegg 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Well, I'd love to know; as I've said in some other comments, we've changed and improved a lot in the last couple years and so feel free to send me feedback.

ldng 13 minutes ago | parent [-]

Have you ?

I've been a ddg user full time for 15+ years and I did see it improve quite lot over time. But quality dropped when Yandex was cut off.

Lately, I've noticed YET AGAIN being trapped in a bubble with results being to clever for their own good ... I did leave Google PRECISELY for the bubble effect ...

Not even mentioned the AI shenanigans with ridiculous results at times. DDG is not immune to enshitification. Way too many managers thinks they know better than the user ... they don't.

muppetman 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

A bet the stupid name doesn’t help.

I know what you mean though, I use it but it’s never quite right. Hard to say exactly why.

pooploop64 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

My sister thought it was malware when she was seeing ads for it. Something about the whole overall branding is just bad.

yegg 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Sorry you feel that way, pooploop64. We are doing a complete brand refresh this year though.

kryogen1c an hour ago | parent | next [-]

This has me absolutely howling.

I use Bing at work for no other reason than sheer laziness, really. You've inspired me to return to DDG.

Keep on keepin on, yegg.

jakeydus 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Dang, did I just see someone get rimjobsteve-d in the wild?

futune 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Having a stupid name is tables stakes in the search space.

flir 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Someone round here said Yandex shows you what you searched for, while Google shows you what it thinks you should have searched for.

Melatonic 29 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Kagi is great

That being said a giant corporation like Google releasing free but amazing research like AlphaFold or (less so) something like Gemma is still cool. They're the ATT PAC Bell or IBM of our age it seems

badc0ffee 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I found that if I search Google Maps for a specific restaurant, it assumes I must just be hungry in general. Just now, I looked for A&W and also got results for Tim Hortons, Popeyes and McDonald's.

Apple Maps never does that. Still, I usually use Google as I want an accurate idea of whether a business is actually open and what its hours are.

astolarz 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Try searching for a type of food that has a place in it's name, like "Nashville hot chicken". It'll either center the map on Nashville, TN, and show you results for "hot chicken", or sometimes will zoom all the way out and show you results for "hot chicken" in both where the map was originally centered and in Nashville, TN.

jorvi 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I just tried "McDonalds" and only got 50 straight McDonalds results. "Burger King" nets 23 Burger Kings, one "Spareribs King" and one "Burger Chicken King". Gotta love inconsistent experiences between customers / regions.

Also, Apple is gearing up to stuff ads (cough "sponsored results" cough) into Maps, at which point it will probably start suffering the same problem..

zx8080 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Gmaps always zooms out when I search. No idea of that happens for others or not.

dcminter 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Occasionally it scrolls me over to a different continent...

throwway120385 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Apple Maps always assumes I'm trying to get directions to a place from wherever I'm at, even if it's on another continent.

gonzalohm 34 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How do you use Kagi AI? I have been paying for their search service for a year now but I haven't looked into their AI offerings

andoando 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The promoted links have gotten insane, the first 5-6 links often appear to be ads

manwe150 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Worse, they often aren't even relevant: we searched "passport renewal" and you had to go the the second page to even get the government site that renews passports, and not ad scams masquerading as the real thing. Optimized for engagement, presumably.

Edit: come to think of it, I don't know why I still use Google. I don't care if they track me. But when they have been actively try to prevent me from finding the information I'm looking for, and instead try to scam me?

flir 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Edit: come to think of it, I don't know why I still use Google.

A guess: because you type queries in the URL bar, and they're the default search engine in your web browser?

(I'm convinced that these days, this is 90% of Google's advantage)

Image search is so hyper-optimised for shopping it's useless.

BLKNSLVR an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Like searching for an app in the store. The first result(s) are paid promotions that often have absolutely no relation to what I was searching for.

Cider9986 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why don't you use an adblocker or Brave browser?

dfxm12 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Even after that, for whatever reason, the next tranche of links is a mixture of AI slop and shopping links. If I'm looking for information about something and not a product to buy, I often have to, gasp, go to the 2nd page of results.

aucisson_masque 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Google doesn't work

I can relate. Just today I was working on my car and I asked Gemini how to remove the Steering ball joint. It all started well, wrote a lengthy answer and then suddenly wiped it all and instead wrote 'i can't answer that, try to ask about another subject'.

For the love of God, talking about cars are now also being forbidden by Google.

And it's not a one off, I asked multiple questions about other parts because I had a lot of issue and it was the first time removing the Gimbals and replacing the Gimbal head on that car.

Google is beyond infuriating, they are a tech company and behave like some old fashioned administration lady. Completely out of touch with real life.

On this last part, I'm convinced that it's because Google management must be completely out of touch with real life. Tech world is special, add millions on top of that..

The best that could happen to this company is to break it's monopoly so that they are forced to get rid of these lunatics.

pooploop64 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm surprised it's still a standard thing to let us see the message getting typed up before it's finalized. The term "literally 1984" gets thrown around a lot but wow what a dystopian feeling when that happens. It's so much creepier than if it just said "sorry that question violates our guidelines" without showing anything.

philposting an hour ago | parent [-]

Agreed, especially as with images it does the opposite. It waits until the image is finalised, then tests it for suitability, and decides whether or not to show it. It would be interesting to see the intermediate steps, but they're not shown.

idiotsecant 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The 'mail is fine' is an impending apocalypse that most people don't think too much about. Google can dump you at any time for any reason or no reason. Your chances are small, but if it happens its incredibly disruptive. I don't know the durable answer, but I definitely need to complete that step of degoogling, the job just seems huge.

yellow_postit 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Get a custom domain. Strat using that. Route to Gmail to start but easily decouple.

It took me about a year of updates but now I rarely get anything to a @gmail

nonfamous 3 hours ago | parent [-]

This is what I do, but it comes with its own set of problems, the most significant of which is deliverability. Some businesses can’t deliver mail to my custom domain at all (a fact I can only discover by trial and error). Some can deliver, but the forwarding to @gmail fails silently — Google just eats the mail without so much as a bounce, let alone dropping it into a spam folder.

It’s the best option we have, but it’s no solution to the crapshoot that is email today.

remarkEon 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Mail is terrible. The central conceit of Gmail, and unfortunately what made it immediately popular, is that you should not have to care about deleting emails because you “have enough” storage. Over time this evolved into an awful incentive structure that results in 100s if not 1000s of spam/useless/irrelevant/garbage marketing emails a day and a reminder that the next tier up is just $1 a month (for now). In the end, the state of mail is emblematic of the whole problem with that company.

iv0Shandoor 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]