#Search#SearchEngines#OpenSource#FLOSS: "Using Google has started to feel worse over the last few years, as results are seemingly taken over by SEO'd content, AI-generated results, and websites with tons of affiliate links and ads. As a response to this state of affairs, a single coder has launched a new, open-source search engine in part as a response to internet’s overwhelmingly corporatized and homogenous search ecosystem. The new search engine, called Stract, is running on a server in the basement of its developer’s office, is highly customizable and, based on feedback from users in the project’s Discord, is rapidly improving.
The project grew out of founder Mikkel Denker’s master’s thesis at the Technical University of Denmark, which was focused on helping people search their own files and documents, he told me in an online chat. He is set to finish that master's next week and will then pivot his attention to Stract fulltime.
“Most of our searches go through the same handful of entities (Google, Bing, Yandex),” Denker told me. “Even other search engines such as DuckDuckGo use Bing for their results. I found it very weird that there essentially is no way to browse the web in an open manner. So that's what I am trying to build.”"
"A Russia-based company has become the legal owner of tech giant Yandex as it prepares to separate from its Dutch parent company, the state-run Interfax news agency reported Tuesday."
Remember web directories? Back in the mists of Internet time, it was clever to know that they existed and know which ones were relevant to the subjects you were interested in. That was when the web was still small enough to imagine we could catalog and curate content.
Indeed: web directories! Given the collapse of effective search through Google &co, we will have to return to those directories. Human-controlled, intelligent lists of access points to real, validated information.
Good summation of the current weird, rewilding state of the web (and tech) from surprisingly, Rolling Stone (a little weird he calls it 'Dungeons and Dragons' rules for instances, but here we are). And it mentions @stefan too!
'[Consumers] tend to view sponsored listings with suspicion and often prefer to click on what are called 'organic' listings that appear high in their product search results but are not sponsored, said [Professor] Mingyu 'Max' Joo... In fact, a sponsored listing can be detrimental when it replaces a seller’s organic listing that would have appeared in the top few positions in the search results.'
Does anyone have suggestions for alternative #SearchEngines that actually have good, meaningful results?? That's going to mean no deeply flawed AI, no SEO gaming the system, just useful results.
This isn't about privacy or a lack of privacy. I'm just really getting sick of not finding what I'm actually looking for.
I've been seriously fed up with Google's search recently: results full of ads and/or SEO spam, to the point that it's hard to find info.
The results in kagi search are overall good (though the map is really lacking), but it's just very expensive. I'd definitely need their $10 per month plan, and I'm not sure I could justify this, given there is free (though arguably worse) competition. 🤔
I guess I could cycle through the trial by creating a new account every week (the joys of having my own domain name) but that seems a little ridiculous, too 😆