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Comment by bxparks

2 days ago

That was probably me, when I stopped using Google Search some years ago. :-) Got tired of the ads, the blog spam, and AI-generated content crap floating to the top of their results page.

The https://udm14.com/ flavor of Google is quite usable, though, esp with notable operators like inurl:this-or-that. But, all in all, yeah, gimme back vanilla Google search from 2008-2010 or so. Back then it was definitely a tool (I worked in investigative journalism at the time), whereas currently "searching" stands for sitting fingers crossed and hoping for the better. But, oh well. </rant>

Kagi has been a great replacement for me. Less blogspam I've found, plus it doesn't give me AI results unless I explicitly tell it I want AI results by adding a "?" to the end of my query.

That's more what I meant. Sure, lots of people still type stuff into the URL bar that takes them to www.google.com/search. But whatever you want to call that results page now, it's no longer Google Search in anything but name.

  • same can be said if you compare www.google.com search from 2012 and 2022, times are changing… I am not defending google search here, I haven’t used it except by accident in long time now but to say google search is “dying” like you often hear (especially here on HN) is a serious detachment from reality