Le Alternative
boosted
Marvin
boosted
Neat review of Kagi on a beautiful blog:
https://tam--lin.tumblr.com/post/792801385787817984/like-many-people-ive-been-deeply-peeved-by-the
Neat review of Kagi on a beautiful blog:
https://tam--lin.tumblr.com/post/792801385787817984/like-many-people-ive-been-deeply-peeved-by-the
We've all seen Google's AI overviews in our search results (or at least those of us using Google). You'll also have seen the reported decline in click-throughs this has prompted as for many searchers, people find the AI overview sufficient for their needs.
Content providers of all sorts) are seeing a decline in traffic to their websites, as Google (essentially) centralises the provision of information....
The Q. is: what can be done to counter this diversion of internet traffic?
... the funny thing is, I know enough about how the search core is built to make an educated guess at how this happened.
Search core farms the query out to (possibly dozens of) completely independent software engines to answer the query. Those engines have their own backing datastores and they don't synchronize to each other; it's necessary they don't to make search fast. So it's entirely possible that the Top Stories core is pulling data that is more recent while the AI Overview core has built its information off of an older search result cache (and possibly hot-cached this answer before the NYT confirmed the death when the news broke locally / on social media). Google, as an institution, leans on the tradeoff "eventual consistency is good enough," so this kind of bug is seen as a predictable side-effect of the chosen tradeoffs.
Does that make us feel better?
No, nor should it. Get your shit together, Google.
Nicolas Fressengeas
boosted
How can an alternative to Google & Co. be created? With your own open web index, such as the one developed in the @openwebsearcheu research project. @Golemde asked project manager Michael Granitzer from the University of Passau and coordinator Stefan Vogt from the @osf how the open web index OWI can now become a #European #search engine. Exciting – because we all want to emancipate ourselves from #USA #serviceshttps://besserwissen.podigee.io/136-openwebsearch (in German).
How can an alternative to Google & Co. be created? With your own open web index, such as the one developed in the @openwebsearcheu research project. @Golemde asked project manager Michael Granitzer from the University of Passau and coordinator Stefan Vogt from the @osf how the open web index OWI can now become a #European #search engine. Exciting – because we all want to emancipate ourselves from #USA #serviceshttps://besserwissen.podigee.io/136-openwebsearch (in German).
Alternatives to Big Tech/Big Data:
Windows, Apple, Google -> Linux (Debian, Fedora, Mint, Arch...)
Microsoft Office -> LibreOffice (Only Office would also work, but the founders are Russian, who knows...)
Google Android, Apple iOS -> Pixel with GrapheneOS, Fairphone 6 with /e/OS, Brax 3 with iode OS/Ubuntu Touch
OneDrive, Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, etc. -> Nextcloud, MEGA, pCloud, Proton Drive
Outlook, Gmail, etc. -> Proton Mail, Tutanota
Airdrop, Link to Windows -> Localsend, KDE Connect
WhatsApp, Telegram, iMessage -> Signal, Element, Threema
Google Search -> Ecosia, Qwant, Startpage, Duckduckgo
YouTube -> Peertube, or as an anonymous YT client: Freetube and Newpipe
Instagram -> Pixelfed
Facebook, X (Twitter) -> Mastodon, possibly Bluesky
Truly secure and anonymous VPN: Mullvad!
This is just a first overview of the most important alternatives for switching. Feel free to continue if needed!
#linux #opensource #freesoftware #windows #endof10 #bigdata #bigtech #surveillance #office #microsoft #google #apple #vpn #mastodon #cloud #grapheneos #iode #ubuntutouch #brax3 #pixel#murena #fairphone #youtube #search
All Europeans 🇪🇺
boosted
#European search index is live now! 🙌
Staan¹ (Search Trusted API Access Network) is a joint venture between @ecosia and @Qwant:
> We’ve started delivering search results from our new European-based search index to #ecosia users! This will help us build the kind of ethical and fair Internet we believe in.
https://blog.ecosia.org/launching-our-european-search-index/
#European search index is live now! 🙌
Staan¹ (Search Trusted API Access Network) is a joint venture between @ecosia and @Qwant:
> We’ve started delivering search results from our new European-based search index to #ecosia users! This will help us build the kind of ethical and fair Internet we believe in.
https://blog.ecosia.org/launching-our-european-search-index/
Jeff Jarvis
boosted
Catch our CEO Vlad on the latest Intelligent Machines episode on @TWiT with @leo, @jeffjarvis & Paris Martineau, where he shares how Kagi is building a better web with search, Orion and our other products:
Catch our CEO Vlad on the latest Intelligent Machines episode on @TWiT with @leo, @jeffjarvis & Paris Martineau, where he shares how Kagi is building a better web with search, Orion and our other products:
marc0s
boosted
Wait, did Movim just unlocked the global search feature in its chat messages? 😱
Thanks to the powerful tsvector/tsquery #PostgreSQL feature (feature not available on MariaDB sorry 😔) you can now search messages by keywords in your history and directly load the conversation from the past 🕰️ !
Just click on the search button or hit Ctrl + F to open the brand new search panel 🔍
The next version will be packed with plenty of awesome features for sure 🚀✨
Wait, did Movim just unlocked the global search feature in its chat messages? 😱
Thanks to the powerful tsvector/tsquery #PostgreSQL feature (feature not available on MariaDB sorry 😔) you can now search messages by keywords in your history and directly load the conversation from the past 🕰️ !
Just click on the search button or hit Ctrl + F to open the brand new search panel 🔍
The next version will be packed with plenty of awesome features for sure 🚀✨
Angela Antunovic
boosted
"Enough is enough—I dumped #Google’s worsening #search for #Kagi"
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/08/enough-is-enough-i-dumped-googles-worsening-search-for-kagi/
"Enough is enough—I dumped #Google’s worsening #search for #Kagi"
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/08/enough-is-enough-i-dumped-googles-worsening-search-for-kagi/
Small things that annoy me, a lighthearted rant/
Every machine asks me for a tip.
Like really? This person that just handed me a can of Sprite from the counter needs a tip but the person at the grocery store next door doesn't?
Look, I want to pay workers a living wage.
Just make that the price and stop harassing me about tips for things that nobody ever tipped for ever until 5 years ago when y'all went nuts with your terminals.
Small things that annoy me, a lighthearted rant/
I typed a thing in the #search box. I even put it in quotes.
I MEANT WHAT I SAID, AND I SAID WHAT I MEANT.
NO, I DID NOT REALLY MEAN whatever it is you thought I really meant. I don't want some alternative sleazy thing from a company I've never heard from on your shopping site, and I definitely wasn't searching for some obscure Windows product on your search site.
WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED HERE?
Tim Chambers
boosted
"A Pew Research Center report published this spring analyzed data from 900 U.S. adults who agreed to share their online browsing activity. About six-in-ten respondents (58%) conducted at least one Google search in March 2025 that produced an AI-generated summary. Additional analysis found that Google users were less likely to click on result links when visiting search pages with an AI summary compared with those without one. For searches that resulted in an AI-generated summary, users very rarely clicked on the sources cited.
Here’s more of what we learned about Google AI summaries and how users interact with them.
Google users who encounter an AI summary are less likely to click on links to other websites than users who do not see one. Users who encountered an AI summary clicked on a traditional search result link in 8% of all visits. Those who did not encounter an AI summary clicked on a search result nearly twice as often (15% of visits).
A bar chart showing that Google users are less likely to click on a link when they encounter search pages with AI summaries.
Google users who encountered an AI summary also rarely clicked on a link in the summary itself. This occurred in just 1% of all visits to pages with such a summary.
Google users are more likely to end their browsing session entirely after visiting a search page with an AI summary than on pages without a summary. This happened on 26% of pages with an AI summary, compared with 16% of pages with only traditional search results."
#AI#GenerativeAI#Google#AIOverview#OpenWeb#Search#SearchEngines
"A Pew Research Center report published this spring analyzed data from 900 U.S. adults who agreed to share their online browsing activity. About six-in-ten respondents (58%) conducted at least one Google search in March 2025 that produced an AI-generated summary. Additional analysis found that Google users were less likely to click on result links when visiting search pages with an AI summary compared with those without one. For searches that resulted in an AI-generated summary, users very rarely clicked on the sources cited.
Here’s more of what we learned about Google AI summaries and how users interact with them.
Google users who encounter an AI summary are less likely to click on links to other websites than users who do not see one. Users who encountered an AI summary clicked on a traditional search result link in 8% of all visits. Those who did not encounter an AI summary clicked on a search result nearly twice as often (15% of visits).
A bar chart showing that Google users are less likely to click on a link when they encounter search pages with AI summaries.
Google users who encountered an AI summary also rarely clicked on a link in the summary itself. This occurred in just 1% of all visits to pages with such a summary.
Google users are more likely to end their browsing session entirely after visiting a search page with an AI summary than on pages without a summary. This happened on 26% of pages with an AI summary, compared with 16% of pages with only traditional search results."
#AI#GenerativeAI#Google#AIOverview#OpenWeb#Search#SearchEngines