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Comment by tqwhite | Hacker News Reader

I solved this Google problem by paying someone else for search. I have switched to kagi.com, a so-called, "paid, ad-free search engine".

I have not yet found one drawback to using it. Unlike previous attempts to switch from Google, I have not ever felt like I was getting substandard answers or thought of switching back. It's been months.

And, it is lovely. The lack of ads and of it having no manipulative motivation makes me very happy. It has other features that are nice.

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Same, it's crazy how easy of a W paying for Kagi is. For a lot of the privacy focused "Google alternatives" you're typically getting privacy in exchange for worse results but on Kagi it's the opposite. They have the !g bang like DuckDuckGo but unlike DDG I've never reached for it. I learned really quick that if Kagi had bad results that Google had even worse ones.

> it's crazy how easy of a W paying for Kagi is.

I have low willingness to setup an account and high suspicion of subscriptions. But Kagi was promising hearing protection for Google's ceaseless jackhammering.

My fingers seemed to setup an account on their own and then I couldn't send Kagi money fast enough. My Google inflicted migraine has been dialed down to 3 or 4.

The downside to having my senses back is that Microsoft's repulsive creepiness is suddenly everywhere. I can't keep MS CP+ and gropey Edge out of my personal desktop space. As if their passive-aggressive Azure/360 wasn't enough abuse.

I have been using Brave Search for a few years now and it's fantastic as well. I don't feel the need to use Google anymore and even if I do for images, I just add a !g to the search query and it automatically redirects me to Google.

I tried Kagi for a while and found it to be excellent. I settled on Perplexity for my own use however.

I still use Duck Duck Go, Google, and Bing-ChatGPT. Not sure why, but sometimes I like variety.

> I tried Kagi for a while and found it to be excellent. I settled on Perplexity for my own use however.

Is Perplexity a page-results search engine?

90% of my googling has been replaced by simply asking ChatGPT questions

people around me calling me crazy/dumb for paying kagi but they don't realize how shitty google become.

A lot of people get really interested when I mention you can block Pinterest and Quora from all search results.

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