>I think 'more customization' which is a theme with a lot of these alternatives is a fundamental dead end. I don't know where this persistent myth comes from th

>I think 'more customization' which is a theme with a lot of these alternatives is a fundamental dead end. I don't know where this persistent myth comes from that people love choice and tinkering, because they clearly don't. I agree, BUT I would like to share my experience moving from Google to Kagi. Google serves me primarily ads, whether it labels them ads or pretends the results aren't ads, they're mostly ads. I see the same horrible domains pop up frequently, and there's nothing I can do about it. Kagi gives me the ability to remove these domains from my search, and it is INCREDIBLE. How many times has Pinterest barged into your search results? Now, one could argue that these are domains which no one wants in their search feed. So perhaps this could be solved by being less beholden to shareholders and an advertising model. However, what about domains which most people want, but I don't? For example, I was finding increasingly polarising political content coming from MSNBC. I didn't like their "human" angle on news, and I didn't appreciate their extremely polarising commentary. So I want to remove all MSNBC results from my search feed. I understand I am probably in the minority. Perhaps my political views don't align with the typical customer. Could a well designed search provider anticipate this need of mine without giving me some kind of method to tell the provider that I don't want to see MSNBC? I'm not convinced so. So I think the answer here is both. Design a search engine well, and give users the ability to customise it.