Pseudo-monopolies are great at extinguishing imagination like that, and tbh Google search (as I understand its basic setup) was only as good as it was thanks to timing and few really good competitors.

    • atomic peach@pawb.social
      8·
      10 months ago

      They have a few plans, but the cheapest is $5/mo. If you go past the allotted searches it’s pay per search after that (at a very tiny cost).

      I switched to DDG when Google started adding cards at the bottom of the first page and made search results utterly useless for me. DDG wasn’t bad but it still felt like something was missing or some results were flooded by a specific site. Kagi went the extra step to group results from a site sorta like how Google has.

      Ultimately it’s the benefits of old Google but some nice refinements and QoL improvements. Because it’s paid for, they don’t need to sell your data or shove paid for results down your throat.

    • UnlimitedRumination [he/him]@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      10 months ago

      I’ll tack on to what the other commenter said:

      • Cost: I considered myself a heavy searcher (software engineer and gamer) and have been surprised to see I have rarely exceeded even half of my allotted searches ($5/mo, 300 searches). I’m now reprogramming my brain to stop turning to alternatives when something should be easy to find because “I might use up all my queries”.
      • Better: apart from all of the cool features, and there are many, there’s also that it just “feels better”. I don’t know how to qualify that despite being a professional in that world. It’s kinda the opposite feeling that I had using Google over the last 5+ years where I wondered if I was getting dumber or if the internet (and Google) was absolutely full of garbage.

      It’s on the very short list of subscriptions I pay for right now despite having a very limited budget at the moment.