It’s impressive how duckduckgo manages to be so much better than bing despite being a frontend for bing
How is Softonic still allowed to advertise it’s literally Malware
Google: 🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑💰💰💰💰💰
Just so I understand. I should not be downloading anything from there?
I clicked a link just yesterday, but something felt off so I backed out and went to the MSI page to download afterburner.
No never. Softonic repackages existing programs with a malware bundle.
Why is that even allowed and why are search engines not held accountable.
Like piracy bad, but this is cool I guess.
It’s all free software, so nobody cares because they don’t stand to gain any money from fixing it. #CapitalismRocks
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Wow reading through these comments makes me a little sad. Most people still don’t know jack about search engines or how they differ under the hood, or eve just how to add them into your browser search bar. Looks like all the effort I put into that that simple search engine guide was in vain.
Well that was a spectacular read in your link, keep calling attention to it, 'cause it’s gonna be a constant drip-drip-drip of people finding out. I didn’t know, but starting today, I’m gonna experiment with SearXNG as my primary search engine, see how that goes!
Thanks
Yacy seems to be what I want but I am worried about the content that would get indexed
Thanks for making such an interesting guide! I’ll read through this and hopefully learn more about search engines and what would work the best for me.
Softonic be like every app you want we have it, even the non exist ones. But once you installed our apps you already have made a pact with the devil
Does anyone know exactly what malware they are serving? I’m tempted to run it though virustotal.
It’s not malware it’s more adware. At least it used to be
Softonic has to have made a deal with the SEO devil.
Non idea how their disgusting malware is always on top.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
.
Borderline?
There’s still DuckDuckGo, or Kagi if you are rich.
Doesnt Duck use bing?
Yes, and DDG has really been degrading over the last few months in quality of results imo.
I noticed this as well. It’s a shame as I still use it as my daily search driver.
I’ll be honest, DDG has never blown me away and I’ve been using it for roughly 5 years. It’s not awful or anything, but maybe once every month or two I need to resort to Google because it can’t find something. I’m absolutely willing to sacrifice some quality for privacy in the general case, though.
Yes, it has never been the best in terms of relevance or depth of index. But lately when I do searches for something like “cherry shrimp aquarium water quality requirements” I’ve been overwhelmed by AI-written SEO blogs. Where google still pulls up results from forums, reddit, other relevant actual humans talking.
Yes.
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what about concepts?
still looks better than the average Google search
It’s gone really downhill ever since co-pilot
It’s hard to call it better than Google now
Is it still good for porn, at least?
Yall use a search engine to search for porn? Like you don’t just open a private tab, go to PornHub and then click something.
furiously searches for that one video from 5 years ago
Y’all use incognito mode?
“Hmm, share on Facebook? Don’t mind if I do!”
Yeah I don’t want certain things autofilling if someone is using my phone.
It’s a meme, Bing was apparently actually good when looking up porn.
Was it or was that guerilla marketing?
Not sure, never tried lol
No :’(
Arbitrarily it will cut off your search and now they just add irrelevant “search for this next” garbage to make it look less barren
Stract.com open search engine a guy built in his basement. It is not perfect but feels like Google used to in the late 90s, when you had real results
Thanks, I’ve never heard of this. I’ve been using Brave Search + DDG + Marginalia
I just use Google with uBlock Origin to get rid of adverts
it’s Microsoft. You don’t need to edgelord censor yourself.
Yeah, you’re totally allowed to cuss on the internet.
Need to enshittify it enough to make the AI features feel like an improvement.
Here’s the UBlock filters for a better experience, on this day, 12-9-2024. Sadly, the results are still bing results, and the MS data vacuum is still in effect. (there’s a chance this get’s filtered cause of all the urls, so if there’s nothing below, oh well, woulda been nice, huh.
edit, image now
Also try to use Firefox (or a fork of Firefox) together with uBlock origin.
Can you paste as text?
Kagi
Clean up your tabs please. Omg
Nah, I like to suffer.
(I don’t use tabs on mobile so I forget they exist)
Lmao
The “Delete tabs after 1 week” has been great
This is the first time I’ve seen Kagi, I’ll check them out. I’ve been pretty happy with SearxNG.
I really love Kagi, it’s been worth the money for me!
I can block results, re-order result priority, enable or disable any feature I want, and their AI summary feature is actually good and is locked behind a click (Quick Answer) so it doesn’t trigger on every search. Also obviously no ads and no tracking.
tbf it seems to be a common issue with search engines atm. brave also has the stupid ai response topmost, and startpage without adblock pushes in so many sponsored results that you need to scroll to get to anything else
I feel like most commenters here would think “no one wants the stupid ai response”, but obviously some people like it or they wouldn’t do it. I think if your searches are more general kind of “can I catch chicken pox from chickens” type questions it might be helpful ?
Except AI is famously unreliable with the accuracy of its answers.
AI: to catch chicken pox from chickens rub live chicken on face
Hm. Let’s see what I get.
And here’s another one for good measure:
That’s true, but I think people still appreciate it… like it’s accurate enough, enough of the time, for people to find it helpful.
That’s why it’s dangerous. If it were wrong 99% of the time people wouldn’t trust it. But being right most of the time risks people depending on it and acting on bad information which can have severe consequences.
My point is, it seems like moat people disagree with you given that search providers put this stuff in their results.
Most states charge a regressive sales tax. By your logic, the fact that people don’t refuse to pay sales tax at the register proves that people enjoy it!
Nonsense. Your metaphor is not analogous.
Sophisticated tech firms do extensive analysis with reference groups, A/B testing, et cetera.
Guaranteed, they’ve found that they get better engagement with their product through these AI results.
This might shock you but a group of 14 year olds complaining on Lemmy is not an indicative sample of opinions.
At least what you are looking for, is on the first page. With Google you get half a page of ads not relevant to your search, and two pages of SEO garbage, before you get to a relevant search.
