this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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I just can't get over the fact to pay for a search engine.
Please convince me otherwise.
At work, as an engineer, I have been able to find answers to obscure problems very quickly and easily via Kagi. To me that is easily worth spending $10 a month, rather than spending hours digging through junk on Google or DDG to find what I’m looking for (or never find it in some cases).
I also find being able to so easily adjust the priority of results to be awesome. For example, some sites like amazon, Home Depot, and Audible, I want the canadian sites always over the american ones. So i can lower the priority of .com and raise .ca with two clicks.
That's how I justify it, if it saves me time at work then that's worth money to me. $10 a month isn't that much, and since I've been trying to reduce my reliance on Google it's even easier to justify the cost. I've been a customer for a few months now and have been really happy with it so far, it's a better experience than Google search.
Sign up for the trial and see. I was really worried that I'd blast through the base sunscription's number of monthly searches, so I started counting the number of DDG searches I did a month. It was barely within Kagi's, so I signed up. The awesome thing is that their results are better to the point that I use fewer queries now.
I'd add - sign up for the trial, and only use it when you need it. You don't need Kagi for the weather or shop opening times or whatever
I've still not used the 100 free searches after two months
When you actually need it, for shopping or technical stuff, it's miles better than Google now
It's so much better than anything free. And most free things you pay in other ways (ads, they sell your information, etc.)
I used duckduckgo for years but often had to go back to Google for things. It was never really good. As Google became worse and worse, I really felt like it was hard to find some things no matter.
I've used Kagi for a couple of months now and it's so fucking good, it also has some awesome features no other search engine has, like having full control over how high up specific websites show in results.
It costs resources to run a search engine. If the search engine you're using is great and free, either someone else is paying for it, or it's funded by debt, which means it will get enshitified over time to repay it. If someone else is paying for it and the service is sustainable, you're good. If not, then it's inevitably going to turn to shit. If you're okay with chasing the latest service that's not enshitified yet, then you're fine, so long as new options keep showing up. If you're not okay with that, or the options dry up, you might want to consider paying for one that will remain great over the long term. If there's a lesson I've learned from the Reddit fiasco last year and the general enshitification trend, it's that good services cost money and I should pay for the ones I appreciate and can afford. Lemmy is one such service. Kagi is another even if I prefer it were open source and community run.
I wouldn't mind hosting my own search engine. But I'll give it a go for a month or two. The 300 results seem generous enough