this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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It doesn't feel like there's any real alternative to Google search. Most of the privacy based search websites are really just Google or Bing on the backend. The only other index is Yandex the Russian one, which, yeah. I'm happy to be proven wrong, but the internet search space is approaching peak enshittification, and it doesn't look like anyone is stepping up to meaningfully change anything. No private companies seem willing to actually square up with Google, considering the investment it would take. Honestly I don't see things getting better anytime soon. This is just another symptom of the erosion of the social contract in the US and the rampant greed that's driving it. Nothing we can do can't be enshittified by bad actors in this environment. Not to be too US centric, most of the big tech companies are based here so our garbage culture fucks over everyone.
Brave has their own index as well. And if you want Google results in not-enshittified, try Kagi.
That aside, the biggest frustrating in the search space is the complete lack of innovation. All those search engines and their alternatives do the same thing and look the same. There haven't been new features or new sources of information in about a decade. The whole space has been extremely stagnant.
The only new thing we got recently was ChatGPT, but as search engine replacement it really doesn't cut it right now, it can enter Wikipedia-style general knowledge question ok'ish, but completely falls apart on anything even mildly obscure (e.g. summaries of lesser known movies are completely wrong). I hope that something good comes from all the AI development, but BingChat so far is a really lack luster and ham-fisted attempt at integrating search with AI, often performing much worse than plain ChatGPT instead of better.