So on my search engine search (!

DDG: free, non-targeted (context-based) ads, bing based, poor results (arguably one can get used to).

Kagi: paid, feature-rich, much better search results.

DDG also has poorer performance, accessibility, and you guessed it, tech stack. VC-backed (a16z etc).

Kagi is more performant, accessible, self- & user-funded. Heavily invested into AI enhanced search. ♻️ unaddressed?

DDG does have a HTML version which drops the landing page size from 2.3mb to 27kb.

While I enjoy my brief trial on Kagi I wonder about the AI part and the idea of paying for search and how that scale to non-tech people, which is top of mind for me because I was just looking for a password manager for my dad and failed.

As many have talked about–is right to privacy reserved for people with means to pay for Apple devices?

I see 3 options for myself-
1. pay for Kagi
2. block JS on DDG and tolerate the results
3. incognito/VPN on Google

On the AI stuff, while I do get some benefit here and there from ChatGPT, as @phillmv said on another subject altogether:

> Move fast and break things!, is easy when nobody cares that it’s broken.

Unreliable tools are only to be used only when mission not critical.

You don’t glue gun a crib for your baby, but sure glue gun a fun gadget that pushes a button for a weekend project.

@muan Not sure if you have tried https://searxng.site or any of the variants? I have run an instance locally for a while (just in a docker container), and it is my preference of those you mentioned so far. This is not as accessible as the others mentioned though, and if you cannot host yourself the public instances are not going to be a great experience.
SearXNG.site

SearXNG — a privacy-respecting, open metasearch engine

@benphegan I have not. But this does look interesting.

What's the main difference in experiences between self hosting and the public instance?

@muan public instance can get blocked/throttled by upstream search engines due to too many requests. It is essentially a search proxy/aggregator, so if an upstream sees too many requests it can block, and you will lose, say, Google results. Hosting yourself, even locally, generally prevents this.
@benphegan Got it. Thanks. I'll definitely look into it when I have some time. Being able to customize it would be a plus too.