I’m looking for something that just gives good results with their own engine, not proxying google or yahoo, without LLMs being involved.

I’ve used startpage and have my own searxng instance self hosted. But both use mostly google results with just a nicer frontend.

I was looking Kagi as an alternative. But they seemed to move to become another AI company, bundling their subscription to the search engine with a subscription to an LLM, so I’m not paying for that.

  • kibiz0r@midwest.socialEnglish
    4·
    3 months ago

    I wouldn’t say Kagi has “moved to become an AI company”.

    They host some open weight models, which you can use with your subscription (which hasn’t increased in price or dropped features since they added AI access), but you’re not forced to use AI ever, and they’re not collecting your searches or prompts to feed into training.

    They’ve taken a pretty skeptical stance on AI from the start. You can disable AI features completely, so you don’t even accidentally use them. But even if you leave them enabled, you have to opt into invoking AI by ending your query with a question mark.

    Edit: Also, they downrank content that has been flagged as AI generated: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/slopstop.html

  • Remy Rose@piefed.socialEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    I have a huge list of small independent ones added to my browser, but I’m not near it and don’t remember most of them. Marginalia-Search is really good though

  • Dingaling@lemmy.mlEnglish
    21·
    3 months ago

    duckduck for 90%.

    Google only when dd fails me.

    To tbh, many of the things I used to use a search engine for I now use a variety of chatbots. No adverts, just answers. (I suspect this won’t last)

  • dan1101@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    Been using Duckduckgo, it’s ok. Like the early days of Google.

    Now I just have to finish de-Googling email and file storage.

  • SpatchyIsOnline@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 months ago

    I’ve been using Qwant for about a year now, they and Ecosia built their own EU based index a while ago. I’ve been pretty happy with it

    They did introduce an AI overview thing a few months back, but it can be permanently turned off with two clicks

  • CerebralHawks@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    I use DuckDuckGo.

    I don’t prefer AI searching, but if I’m in a hurry I’ll look at the AI summary. You can disable it by going to noai.duckduckgo.com. I just don’t bother with that. If I don’t like the AI summary, I don’t expand it.