Ask HN: Do you still use Google?
Do you still use Google? Gmail? YouTube? Gemini? Chrome? Android?
I use LLMs for most info now, any slightly ambiguous query really. Often times I use the LLM to figure out what source I should find, then I just use google for retrieval
When I want to “surf the web” I use kagi search (usually with small web filter) when I want to see sources written by people. This isn’t that often, but when I need it kagi is the best!
An example, the other day I wanted to make fermented hot sauce, and I couldn’t remember how much salt was needed for the fermentation. I could google and get served hundreds of crappy ad ridden recipe sites that have the answer to my question buried under five pop up videos, or I could ask an llm with one or two follow ups and have a much more pleasant experience.
Then when I decided I wanted to follow a real recipe I used kagi with small web to find a recipe page that wasn’t an ad farm.
A few more steps than google, but all and all so much better.
Here are the issues I've faced with some of the alternatives: 1. Duck: Used it for years but the quality of results has taken a nosedive lately. 2. Startpage: Was good when it used to get results from Google but now it's a mix of Google and Bing. 3. Metasearch engines (SearX): Unreliable since they rely on scraping. 4. Kagi: Results are not better enough to consider paying for it.
That being said, I don't have my Google account logged in while doing searches.
I hate when people bash good things without providing any details. This is so unhelpful. I've been using DDG for 5+ years; switching to Google never helps to find something useful on top.
Google Shopping is advantage tho.
I spend a lot of time in chat with various LLMs, but I typically find, even with deep research, I do a better job of looking for additional context myself (or at last, there comes a point I know exactly what I want), so google search is still important for me, even outside the regular searching the web I'd do. Youtube, I'm using more than I used to but not more of the same, I think maybe with LLMs I have more free time + I spend more time keeping up with tech than I did ever in the 2010s, so I watch more "pop tech" than I ever did before. I also arrange my thoughts from LLMs into documents in google docs, so, I find myself in google docs more for personal than I used to.
Google is still a good search engine, and the info-boxes and summaries have an added value.
Gmail is solid, YouTube has good content, Chrome until uBlock Origin stops working and Android because of the personal-use apps I've developed for it, and iOS doesn't really convince me enough to migrate into the Apple ecosystem.
Granted, my searches are usually "toLocaleString() format" or "floor tiles popping reddit" and such. That takes me to MDN, stackoverflow, reddit etc.
I recently paid for Kagi since I like their mission but I'm more used to the results from google. I'll see where it takes me.
I read documentation on my leisure time. Weird hobby of mine lol
There are dozens of us!
most of the people around me spend their days doomscrolling on social media when they're free
But it is. That’s why you, the user (or an enterprising LLM search tool) need to do things like
> set up some prompts that you can default to for different use cases
Personally, I’d rather look up first party sources than configure a tool to generate 3rd party information that’s not always correct.
Hey Google, here's a modest proposal: nerdsearch.google.com. Return the same results, but in a spartan HN-like format, with no JS or fingerprinting or other "did be evil" things. Non-techies will never find out about it if you don't advertise it. You can still fingerprint people who don't know or care about it.
> Gmail? YouTube? Gemini? Chrome? Android
Most of these are best-in-class, so I think I detect some bias in the question.
I also don’t like android because of the privacy model. Ditto for chrome.
But no web search any more from google. kagi and nowadays chatgpt were a huge improvement.
I try to avoid google products now. which I don’t like to say because it felt so good being a google user and fan in the early days of google.
I pay for Google Workspace Business Standard. The value per dollar is astronomical.
In some ways, GCP is ahead of the pack.
I'd love to see big tech broken up, and I'd like to think many Google divisions would do well on their own.
One exception may be YouTube, where so much of the cost is subsidized. But then I'd be happy to pay double for premium as it's one of the main sources for entertainment in our household.
Google search has felt useless to me for years, and AI results have made it worse. I use DDG for stuff like finding a business's website, but anything more complex will generally send me to a specialized engine. I've been meaning to try Kagi but haven't gotten around to it yet
ChatGPT gives me the answer I need now. From there I can ask more questions and it rabbit holes for me.
For a non business users there really is no need to use them when there are, in my opinion, better open source alternatives.
The only product I do use is the AOSP (Android Open Source Project) for my phones.
The fact that I have a Pixel makes me uncomfortable on its own right, because I'm afraid to get a patronizing email from Command and Control at any moment: it has come to our attention that you are in Europe now therefore we are changing your account (my wife is European) or that I "violated" some out of wack machine learning heuristics and I will be left without a functional phone.
Android is cheaper. Google maps and calendar are the backbone of my business and work seamlessly. Maps is literally the only reason to have Google Play Services on my phone.
Google workspace still has the best spam filtering for email.
We still spend a ton of money every month on Google Ads because it works. I am worried, though, that people will stop using Google to find things - because then my time investment in learning the absolute dog poop user interface of AdWords will have been wasted.
Chrome has some features that make it a must have (like Web Serial API) but Firefox is my daily driver because of certain plugins and I'm used to it now.
YouTube works still without ads if you know how. If I was forced to endure the ads (in the middle of songs etc) I would use it a lot less!
Gemini is still not as good as chatgpt/deepseek imo
(and Chrome only for my work schedule because it doesn't work in Firefox)
I left mail/calendar/docs behind years ago. Fastmail is excellent.
But even though Searx is really good at it, I find myself using Google image search more often than not.
And then there’s YouTube. Even with all its bullshit I don’t know how to replace it.
Not chrome, not much google search.