this post was submitted on 23 May 2024
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Update: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-outage-affects-bing-copilot-duckduckgo-and-chatgpt-internet-search/

It's also important to note that ChatGPT internet search and DuckDuckGo are experiencing similar issues because they use the Bing API.

UPDATE 2

20240523_210619

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (41 children)

Okay.

Now that we already know we are pretty much at the hands of one pupeteer, what options are there?

I already read about Kagi (apologies if mispelled) but I like to write as a hobby and 300 searches per month go fast.

What other options are there?

Edit:

For those who may be arriving now:

  • Kagi seems to be a good option for an alternative search engine; it is a paid service, for which I don't have the €€€ right now. Many speak very well about it.
  • SearXNG is a thing as well, to my understanding a decentralized search system. Worth the try, in my opinion. If it's something that is decentralized, it is worthy to support and divulge.
  • There is mojeek.com, supposedly not very good but any option that goes against the monopoly is worth the try! I'm going to try this one.
  • Brave.com is an option but is a bit shady.
  • You should try Ecosia if you want to support reforestation efforts. Read somewhere in the thread it is part of the Bing ecosystem.
  • Yep is a thing as well. Somewhere in the thread, a lemmy points they use the search results for AI trainning. So... That is that.
  • And it seems there is a search engine by the name of dogpile.com.
  • Startpage is another search engine (portal?) suggested by another user. I've used it before and like it. Read somewhere it somehow piped a standard google search but removed tracking and ads.
  • and I just remembered Presearch.com. This is a really shady one (crypto warning!) that I suspect is a fork/collab with Brave Browser. I've used it, they have reward-per-search reward system (or had) where they give you crypto for every search. Good results, some that don't come up neither on DDG nor Google.

p.p.s Should I start categorizing these from "shady" to "worthy"?

p.p.s 2 Does anyone remember StumbleUpon? I know it was never a search engine to begin with but it was the best source of good internet content I ever got acquainted to.

Can we get something like that back?

[–] [email protected] 33 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (2 children)

This is the single most obnoxious name I've ever seen. But, the service could be good (I've never used it)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

Basically the mother of all search engines. Merges Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, etc. into one.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

it's a fork (Next Generation) of deprecated SearX project.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Mojeek is far from perfect, but also is 100% independent.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Thank you I tried Mojeek a few days ago but I forgot what it was called. the site for mojeek is mojeek.com btw.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Sometimes it's a hard one to remember 😅

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That’s a nice hobby

I would suggest you to install a local instance of a LLM (mistral or llama3 for example) to widen your source of information. Go straight to Wikipedia instead of “googling” it if you don’t already.

Anyway, I didn’t know about kagi so I might take my own advice and give it a try.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (2 children)

How big are they, and what do I need to use them well?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Take a look at Ollama.ai, just follow the installation instructions. A decent GPU is recommended, and the models are around 10GB iirc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Most of 7b-8b models run just fine in 4bits quant and won’t use more than 4 or 5 GB of VRAM.

The only important metric is the amount of VRAM as the model must be loaded in VRAM for fast inference.

You could use CPU and RAM but it is really painfully slow.

If you got an Apple Silicon Mac it could be even simpler.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I have an Intel Celeron Mobile laptop with iGPU and, I think, 256MB VRAM. How many bs does that get me for the LLM?

~~Only half-joking. That's my still functional old daily driver now serving as homelab~~

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Well, I got a good news and a bad news.

The bad news is you won't do shit with that my dear friend.

The good news is that you won't need it because the duck is back.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

There's also mojeek.com running their own index. Not perfect, but sometimes usable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

you can also send us in queries where we're not perfect, or let us know elsewhere, and we're keen on fixing them

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

That was unexpected, but welcome message. Thanks for caring.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

There's a new search engine called Yep, made by the team at Ahrefs, a SEO tool SaaS.

It looks promising because they have their own index, but it's a bit slow sometimes.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago

We may collect aggregated, non-personal search data to improve search algorithms, train AI models

ugh

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I jumped back on ecosia. It's nice there, but I'm sure there are issues that a non tech person like me may not know about

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

You're welcome.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Ecosia also uses Bing and was also down. That's the one I use.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Just letting you know kagi has a family plan with unlimited searches, so you can probably split it with family or friends! I have yet to see how searxng search holds up to kagi.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

if you just hate western companies, there's always yandex, supports more fringe contents as well, since russia moment.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

yeah, but it is another option if you don't want to sell your data to big google. Plus it also has utility in other areas.

Worth consideration.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Hate requires too much emotional investment. What I want is options.

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