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>> The Dead Internet is a mirage caused by the unreasonable effectiveness of digital marketing… > On the contrary… The search engines themselves… With you 100

>> The Dead Internet is a mirage caused by the unreasonable effectiveness of digital marketing… > On the contrary… The search engines themselves… With you 100% except for the opening rebuttal. What do you think /caused/ search engines to devolve like this if not digital marketing? I pay cash for kagi.com, and recommend it. Engineers should try their “lens” approach. I’d pay more for trusted curated lenses, and hope that’s in their model. The site above could offer a curated list of valid sites, and then I’d find them in the one engine too. (See Similar Projects on Marginalia’s About page.) I also pay for Neeva, but they’re clearly trying to have their advertorial cake and eat it too. Still, it’s a better resource than Google when seeking an actual product. I worry that solving digital marketing’s ‘unreasonable effectivness’ requires more than just ability to subscribe to content without ads, it should be possible to buy products without marketing budget built into the cost. Lower cost products would outcompete those spending money on ads, so all else being equal, enabling products to compete without marketing budget is the only solution I see. I don’t think a Neeva solves this by itself, though it’s likely a necessary component.

skrtskrt 4y ago
Also a big fan & paying customer of kagi.com - the only setting adjustment I've made so far is pushing docs.rs up in search results, so I get that instead of crates.io when looking up Rust stuff. To me it falls into the category of IntelliJ products, where it makes my life and productivity so much better that the price is a no-brainer
disqard 4y ago
Another vote of support for kagi.com -- it's well worth the payment. Our (collective) disinclination towards paying for things on the Internet is what has led to the "everything must be monetized via ads" local maxima we're now stuck in. If you care enough about this state of affairs, and can afford to do so (most people here can), then please consider paying for parts of the Internet that are important to you, like a search engine.
- Nullabillity 4y ago
  Paid search engines sound like they'd make filter bubbles even worse though, no?
  - kbenson 4y ago
    It depends on what the customer base is paying for and expecting. If they expect a bubble and complain about it not being there, they'll likely get a bubble. If they complain about the bubble being there, steps will likely be taken to reduce or remove it. For better or worse, the direction of a paid product is usually fairly well defined, as long as they've taken time to understand their customers.
  - Nasrudith 4y ago
    Have you seen the crap outside the filter bubble? It is trendy to call filter bubbles the well from which all sorrows are drawn but not everything is worth reading, no matter how many drink the koolaid.
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
    When you have as much information as there is on the internet, any attempt to sort through it creates a bubble. At least a paid search engine allows feedback between the users and the algorithm and some confidence that the engine won't go under because the authors lost interest/got tired fighting abuse for free/etc.
  - mulmen 4y ago
    The filter bubble is the value proposition. I never want to see results from spam sites like Quora or expertsexchange.
  - warble 4y ago
    This isn't scientific obviously, but I feel since I started using Kagi, my scope has widened significantly of what I rely on for results. Another +1 for what these guys are attempting. You pay for search one way or another, I'd rather be direct about it.
  - 4y ago
time_to_smile 4y ago
Another happy Kagi customer here. As a data scientist, just being able to block Towards Data Science and other garbage DS content churned out by amateurs to get their resumes boosted is well, well worth it. It's ridiculous how much top ranking content on Google is flat out technically incorrect, or at least clearly misunderstanding the subject.
int_19h 4y ago
What worries me about Kagi is this bit in their FAQ: "... it costs us about $1 to process 80 searches. ... An average Kagi beta user is actually searching about 30 times a day. At USD $10/month, the price does not even cover our cost for average use, and we are basically betting that average use will go down a bit with time because during beta people may be searching more than normal due to testing etc. Our goal is to find the minimum price at which we can sustain the business. If it turns out that we have more room we will decrease it. But it can also be that we may need to increase it." I went and looked up my Google search history for yesterday - it's 40 searches. I'd expect it to be above average, but still... if it's $10 per 80 queries, it feels like $10 is likely to be too low to be sustainable. And while I personally don't mind paying more, I wonder how many people will - and what it'll mean for the service long term, if they just can't attract enough people to make it worthwhile.

skrtskrt 4y ago

Also a big fan & paying customer of kagi.com - the only setting adjustment I've made so far is pushing docs.rs up in search results, so I get that instead of crates.io when looking up Rust stuff. To me it falls into the category of IntelliJ products, where it makes my life and productivity so much better that the price is a no-brainer

disqard 4y ago

Another vote of support for kagi.com -- it's well worth the payment. Our (collective) disinclination towards paying for things on the Internet is what has led to the "everything must be monetized via ads" local maxima we're now stuck in. If you care enough about this state of affairs, and can afford to do so (most people here can), then please consider paying for parts of the Internet that are important to you, like a search engine.

Nullabillity 4y ago
Paid search engines sound like they'd make filter bubbles even worse though, no?
- kbenson 4y ago
  It depends on what the customer base is paying for and expecting. If they expect a bubble and complain about it not being there, they'll likely get a bubble. If they complain about the bubble being there, steps will likely be taken to reduce or remove it. For better or worse, the direction of a paid product is usually fairly well defined, as long as they've taken time to understand their customers.
- Nasrudith 4y ago
  Have you seen the crap outside the filter bubble? It is trendy to call filter bubbles the well from which all sorrows are drawn but not everything is worth reading, no matter how many drink the koolaid.
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  When you have as much information as there is on the internet, any attempt to sort through it creates a bubble. At least a paid search engine allows feedback between the users and the algorithm and some confidence that the engine won't go under because the authors lost interest/got tired fighting abuse for free/etc.
- mulmen 4y ago
  The filter bubble is the value proposition. I never want to see results from spam sites like Quora or expertsexchange.
- warble 4y ago
  This isn't scientific obviously, but I feel since I started using Kagi, my scope has widened significantly of what I rely on for results. Another +1 for what these guys are attempting. You pay for search one way or another, I'd rather be direct about it.
- 4y ago

time_to_smile 4y ago

Another happy Kagi customer here. As a data scientist, just being able to block Towards Data Science and other garbage DS content churned out by amateurs to get their resumes boosted is well, well worth it. It's ridiculous how much top ranking content on Google is flat out technically incorrect, or at least clearly misunderstanding the subject.

int_19h 4y ago

What worries me about Kagi is this bit in their FAQ: "... it costs us about $1 to process 80 searches. ... An average Kagi beta user is actually searching about 30 times a day. At USD $10/month, the price does not even cover our cost for average use, and we are basically betting that average use will go down a bit with time because during beta people may be searching more than normal due to testing etc. Our goal is to find the minimum price at which we can sustain the business. If it turns out that we have more room we will decrease it. But it can also be that we may need to increase it." I went and looked up my Google search history for yesterday - it's 40 searches. I'd expect it to be above average, but still... if it's $10 per 80 queries, it feels like $10 is likely to be too low to be sustainable. And while I personally don't mind paying more, I wonder how many people will - and what it'll mean for the service long term, if they just can't attract enough people to make it worthwhile.