#Search Engine

[nists]

now that google has an AI overview for most web searches that needlessly harms the environment, i've switched to using startpage.com as my search engine. it's based on google but simpler, and very privacy oriented. one can get an addon for Firefox that inserts it as default, and i see there is also a mobile app.

edit: i have been informed that duckduckgo may also be a decent alternative, tho one has to manually turn AI assist off. it is also integrated into Firefox without the need for addon.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Google is now the only search engine that can surface results from Reddit, making one of the web’s most valuable repositories of user generated content exclusive to the internet’s already dominant search engine. If you use Bing, DuckDuckGo, Mojeek, Qwant or any other alternative search engine that doesn’t rely on Google’s indexing and search Reddit by using “site:reddit.com,” you will not see any results from the last week. DuckDuckGo is currently turning up seven links when searching Reddit, but provides no data on where the links go or why, instead only saying that “We would like to show you a description here but the site won't allow us.” Older results will still show up, but these search engines are no longer able to “crawl” Reddit, meaning that Google is the only search engine that will turn up results from Reddit going forward. Searching for Reddit still works on Kagi, an independent, paid search engine that buys part of its search index from Google. The news shows how Google’s near monopoly on search is now actively hindering other companies’ ability to compete at a time when Google is facing increasing criticism over the quality of its search results. And while neither Reddit or Google responded to a request for comment, it appears that the exclusion of other search engines is the result of a multi-million dollar deal that gives Google the right to scrape Reddit for data to train its AI products.

July 24 2024

[soulofkole]

I'm sure most of ya already knew this. 💚 I try to do the best I can at reducing my carbon footprint but companies make it so hard these days and they shouldn't. They should have options to opt out of using as much AI as you can or all of it. And to the people who don't know this and think like Trump where you're gonna get "beachfront properties" 🤦‍♀️...I hate to tell you this but that's not what is going to happen. What will happen is MASSIVE sinkholes, tsunami's, earthquakes, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, severe winds and rain and snow; it's not just a rise or decrease in water. It can cause an environmental apocalypse that will reduce the world to nothing but rubble.

[nixcraft]

I asked Google "who ruined Google" and they replied honestly using their AI, which is now forced on all of us. It's too funny not to share!

[charl0ttan]

there is just something so wonderfully beautiful to me about like public access radio. you dont necessarily know what the hosts or caller look like or are called. the hosts dont necessarily know what the caller looks like or is called and they certainly dont even know youre listening. but its this proxy thing. youre all hanging out on different levels of familiarity. and also maybe its nighttime and liminal and so still and isolated and serene and beautiful i love it. because of that four hour dark ambient nighttime radio album yea. anyway can anyone point me towards something like this in the real world. i found the npr app but id like other perspectives on the topic 👍

[revretch]

If you're up to spending $10 a month on a search engine, I've given up and just started paying for Kagi because all the free options are shit. Kagi's great so far--verbatim search actually works; no sponsored sites, AI summary or videos clogging up the results unless you explicitly request them; you can just fucking *save* the images they give you in the mobile browser without having to do a workaround; and they even try to replicate the old "Google snapshot" feature using archive.org! Definitely worth it imo. Even worth all the semicolons I just used.

[warakami-vaporwave]

Windows 94!

[destielmemenews]

DOJ is considering Breaking up Google for violating antitrust law, especially for its monopoly on online search

Other options would include forcing Google to share data with its rivals or paying large fines.

source 1

source 2

source 3

[allykatsart]

Hello! I had a question regarding your internet humans! (awesome designs btw) Do you happen to have any idea of what search engines might look like? I was thinking they might be some like... greater life form ig? bc they sort of house every single website out there, but honestly I'm not really sure and I'd love to see what you think/come up with!

So... that's not actually how search engines work. They do not "house every single website" within them. Lemme educate y'all a bit since I know I've got some youngin's here!

Back in the old days (before search engines), to find a website you would have to know it's URL and type it into the address bar (not the search bar, the one with the URL). This was back in the days before the internet had really taken off.

Search Engines were websites you went to that searched for other websites. At first they just looked for similar URL's, then they started incorporating tags that people put under their photos. Then that slowly grew to using keywords, meta data, etc!

(And then companies started paying to get their websites at the top of the search results. And then some search engines started recording personal data and selling it to advertisers. And then they got so big they could start influencing politics. But I digress)

I guess, for the Internet Humans, search engines are also websites! I guess they'd act as... Guides? Maybe traffic controllers? Idk, something that directed you to go where you needed to go. Of course, sometimes they'll just straight deceive the customer to make a quick buck.

They'd have eyes that can see into a websites' data and scan it for what they need. It's a little unnerving to be around them/hold a conversation with them because of that. They're always looking for something...

[netscapenavigator-official]

Hmm. I just noticed something odd: It seems like DuckDuckGo is utilizing AI Summaries for web results, and they don't allow you to turn this off.

In their "AI Features" settings tab, you can only toggle their AI Chat and their AI Quick Answers that occasionally pop up. There is ZERO mention of this feature, despite it being pretty clear (to me anyway) that they're using some type of neural computing to create those result summaries. (Hence the difference in descriptions for the #1 result with and without "fuck" added.)

Maybe something else is going on that I'm not aware of or don't understand, but it's certainly a disappointing amount of non-transparency from DuckDuckGo when they're trying to build a privacy-focused and trustworthy brand identity.

[intersexcat-tboy]

Interactions with Google:

Prosthetic arm? Ok, I'll show you external prosthetics made from carbon fiber, titanium, aluminum

Prosthetic eye? Ok, I'll show you plastic and silicone, maybe some glass (:

Prosthetic leg? Same as arm but now for leg functions

Prosthetic penis? You mean implant? The surgery to implant? The thing that goes inside? Inside parts?

Oh, you mean WEARABLE ones? Ok, sure, but I'll only show you it in a trans context. Also they're either cheap or incredibly expensive and delicate. Also some of them you can't even use for sex. No, no one really cares about you getting pleasure and if they do, you can't fit in

[probablyasocialecologist]

Google search really has been taken over by low-quality SEO spam, according to a new, year-long study by German researchers. The researchers, from Leipzig University, Bauhaus-University Weimar, and the Center for Scalable Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence, set out to answer the question "Is Google Getting Worse?" by studying search results for 7,392 product-review terms across Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo over the course of a year.  They found that, overall, "higher-ranked pages are on average more optimized, more monetized with affiliate marketing, and they show signs of lower text quality ...  we find that only a small portion of product reviews on the web uses affiliate marketing, but the majority of all search results do."  They also found that spam sites are in a constant war with Google over the rankings, and that spam sites will regularly find ways to game the system, rise to the top of Google's rankings, and then will be knocked down. "SEO is a constant battle and we see repeated patterns of review spam entering and leaving the results as search engines and SEO engineers take turns adjusting their parameters," they wrote.

[...]

The researchers warn that this rankings war is likely to get much worse with the advent of AI-generated spam, and that it genuinely threatens the future utility of search engines: "the line between benign content and spam in the form of content and link farms becomes increasingly blurry—a situation that will surely worsen in the wake of generative AI. We conclude that dynamic adversarial spam in the form of low-quality, mass-produced commercial content deserves more attention."

[mactiir]

Me: i really need to find a way to get my natural curiosity back... the burdens of life are sapping my intellect...

The wonderings of my powerful intellect (My search history): "where does the laundry water go", "are laundry machines basically big sinks", "shellac", "bugs in my area"

[fictionalred]

for those also annoyed by duckduckgo using AI and trying to get you to use it:

I've been using startpage as my default search engine for months now and it's honestly great

[charl0ttan]

Sorry, do you have the "My balls" locket gif on hand please? Peace and love on planet earth

this one?