solrize@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I tried Kagi (free 100 query plan) and got about the same results as google/DDG. It’s kind of nice but I couldn’t see subscribing. I hate subscriptions. If they sold access for a flat fee per query (let’s say $5 for 200 queries) I’d buy that, and use a dozen or so queries a month.
I love the idea of paying for a high quality service that I use, but Kagi was significantly worse than Google. I searched for local businesses, programming questions, and general knowledge stuff.
I’ll try it again in a year or two and see if it works for me.
I switched to Kagi about 6 months back. It is overall better, but at least on par with Google, also as far as tech / programming - related questions go. Whenever I do not get a useful result from Kagi, it literally finds nothing - I then try Google for verification, which also lists absolutely no results. That happened approximately 4 times since I switched.
Kagi is worse than Google for: reviews, memes, porn, as well as “descriptive” searches, i. e. when trying to describe the desired result using natural language, e. g. “video game character that swallows everything” (I made that up just now for Kirby).
Kagi’s ability to use lenses and assign weights to sites can make a big difference.
At first, they didn’t have anonymous payments and an unattractive pricing model, but that has been fixed for a while, otherwise I wouldn’t have switched.
Overall, I am very satisfied and have absolutely zero plans of ever using Google again.
I find Kagi results slightly better but the interface is so much nicer and site ranking is great. Mostly though whenever I try using Google it just feels scummy and more obvious than ever that they are trying to shove ad garbage down my brain. I really hope I never need to go back to that again. Agree that crypto payment option for Kagi is clutch, but wish they made that more front and center. Unless you look for it Kagi wants your name, address, and credit card number and all your searches are linked to that. That’s even scummier than Google.
They claim that they don’t link/save your search history so although they have your details for payment, technically it’s not linked. If they aren’t lying…
Their business needs steady cashflows. You pay for the up time, not the queries.
Then they wouldn’t have tiered plans. Anyway try a $12/year plan with a few queries per month. $60/y adds up a lot faster.
Yup, it’s way too expensive. If they bundled it with another service to provide more value, I might consider it. But from some back-of-the-napkin math, they’re charging way more than their competitors make from ads.
I’d also be interested in a pay-per-search option. I’d be happy loading up $5 every so often if they other services didn’t find what I’m looking for.
Search.brave.com ain’t bad
Too bad brave's CEO is a giant bigoted piece of shit who I refuse to support.
Damnit. Okay, what’s the next best Chromium based browser? I love Firefox but I have to keep a Chromium browser on hand for the few sites FF just doesn’t handle properly.
Vivaldi was my main browser for a while, and my backup chromium browser since I switched back to Firefox. Most of the privacy stuff in Brave is available as separate extensions and I really like Vivaldi’s sidebar and profile management.
I just use ungoogled chromium in those cases
What sites don’t FF handle? Small or big?
ungoogled chromium obviously
I like thorium
If it works for you, and it’s only a secondary/failsafe browser, shouldn’t feel too guilty to use it.
I don’t use brave and I’m not aware of what’s the issue with the CEO, not sure if knowing that would change my protective
You know he isn’t retrieving the results personally?
Pieces of shit exist in most companies.
No way, really?!?!
I try to not reward companies that hire CEOs who actively support the extermination of gay people
I don’t use Kagi, but pretty sure they offer the plan you want.
They start at $5/month (kagi.com/pricing) and that misses some features. But, I thought they started at $10/month. It may have changed. Anyway, I hate subscriptions and would rather pay by the query. It’s something I’d use once in a while, so I don’t want to keep paying while it idles.
Kraiden@kbin.run 7 months ago
so I've just giving it a quick test vs google with the query "open source chromecast alternative"
the first result for both is a reddit post about NymphCast
it's the rest of the results that are interesting though.
Google has a ycombinator news article about NymphCast and then decends into the usual "17 best chromecast alternatives in 2024" rubbish
Kagi on the other hand lists the github for NymphCast, and then goes on to list others... mirrorCast, pyCaster, free Cast, an article on using a raspberry pi as a chromecast alternative.
obviously this is only anecdotal, and very unscientific, but it's got me interested for sure! Gonna bookmark it and see how it goes
surfrock66@lemmy.world 7 months ago
No joke can you share those results? I’m holding out for matter cast
aido@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Here you go!
surfrock66@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Huge bummer that they’re all 5+ years old. We’ve been moving to libreelec with Disney+, Jellycon, Netflix, Youtube, and amazon prime plugins. It’s not the same, but it’s workable. If Amazon keeps MatterCast open and open source implementations get made, that’s where I’m focusing my attention. A raspberry pi with libreelec that can be a casting target feels, to me, like the holy grail:
theverge.com/…/amazon-matter-casting-echo-show-fi…