Cory Doctorow
@pluralistic@mamot.fr  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

It's been more than a year since I gave up on Google Search (I switched to Kagi.com and never looked back). I don't miss it. It had gotten terrible. It's gotten worse since, thanks to AI (of course):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

--

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/15/inhuman-gigapede/#coprophagic-ai

1/

A smoggy cityscape. In the foreground is a partially open can of Spam, whose label has been pixelated. The glistening spam atop the can has been overlaid with the original Google homepage. In the background looms the glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en -- Radek Kołakowski (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Warszawski_smog_(22798350941).jpg CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en
A smoggy cityscape. In the foreground is a partially open can of Spam, whose label has been pixelated. The glistening spam atop the can has been overlaid with the original Google homepage. In the background looms the glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en -- Radek Kołakowski (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Warszawski_smog_(22798350941).jpg CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en
A smoggy cityscape. In the foreground is a partially open can of Spam, whose label has been pixelated. The glistening spam atop the can has been overlaid with the original Google homepage. In the background looms the glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en -- Radek Kołakowski (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Warszawski_smog_(22798350941).jpg CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en
Alyn
@alyn@wandering.shop replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago
@pluralistic
Got upset enough that I now run a small instance of #searxng which does a similar thing to #Kagi (searches across multiple services) but without its own index - a metasearch engine essentially.
Strips out ads and AI responses and was moderately useful a little while ago for ascertaining that one service had heavily de-prioritised a blog post - the interface indicates which services provided which results.
Cory Doctorow
@pluralistic@mamot.fr replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago
@iscarlosmolero @kagihq

You create the account.

They produce a zero-knowledge token that cryptographically proves that you are an account holder without identifying you.

Your browser provides that token when you interact with the server.

It's an IETF standard for anonymous authorization tokens:

https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/privacypass/about/
Cory Doctorow
@pluralistic@mamot.fr replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago
Cory Doctorow
@pluralistic@mamot.fr replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago
Cory Doctorow
@pluralistic@mamot.fr replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago
Cory Doctorow
@pluralistic@mamot.fr replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago
Cory Doctorow
@pluralistic@mamot.fr replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago
Cory Doctorow
@pluralistic@mamot.fr replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago
1+ more replies (not shown)