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Comment by reddalo | Hacker News Reader

We need to collectively stop using Google, but the alternatives are just not as good for some things.

The best one is probably Kagi, but let's be real: "normal" people would never pay for a search engine service. Well, "normal" people don't even know the difference between Google, Google Chrome and probably the internet.

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I say this as someone who doesn't yet use Kagi but is increasingly warming to the idea: I think normal people may pay for a search engine, one day. People used to think the bottom had irrevocably fallen out of paying for media once internet piracy became a thing. Streaming services may be in an unappealing state now, but they at least showed that people can be persuaded to pay for something if it makes access to the things they love easier. We might be years away from it, but I wouldn't say never. And $10 to find things on the internet again seems like a more persuasive offer than what people are currently paying for streaming.

I'd pay 10€ for DDG

I wonder if there is a market for search engine where sites pay to be listed. Not a substantial amount like they would for ads. But a small compute fee for the spider plus a contribution for being indexed.

People will pay for clicks. If a small search engine with pay per list sends a lot of visitors website owners will for sure pay. The key I think is to have verified and unverified listings, and give people a free trial of being verified before bumping them out so they know what they're paying for.

I’d love to go full Kagi. I feel the family pricing, as a new user, is just a little too high for me.

A family of four, two kids and two adults; 20 dollars ex GST (excluding tax) is.. gosh.

With the cost of living growing so quickly.. It’s quite a defeating experience.

So in conclusion; I expand your criteria above. Even “not-normal” people may not pay for a search engine, though for financial reasons in my case.

My default is Duckduckgo but in the recent weeks they have massively upped how abrasive their ads are. Nothing wrong with there being search related ads but the sheer volume is getting out of control.

Hi, I work at DuckDuckGo - thanks for the feedback. Nothing much has changed in the past few weeks on our side, and so would love some more info so we can investigate. Do you mind sharing what country you are searching from, and whether you noticed on desktop or mobile? Also just FYI — you can turn ads off completely in settings if you want.

I am based in Australia. I am not sure if it is the quantity has increased, but their size definitely has. I usually have to scroll a full screen down before I start seeing non-paid results. I am on a desktop machine, mobile has been absolutely fine.

Also didn't know you could turn them off. I don't mind ads to support businesses when it is reasonable and DDG is a decent business. I just hope you folks don't try to keep up with the giants by playing their game. ;)

Got it, thanks for the follow-up, and for your support! It should be pretty rare that you would see no organic content above the fold. But we'd like to take a closer look, and if you have any particular queries where the ads are surprisingly tall, it would be useful to know.

Google was a decent search engine until the gold rush years.

Try kagi

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