I'm decrepit enough to remember pre-Google web, with competing search engines. Bring back webrings!
this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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So what happens to the situation of having to pay ad-word rent on your own brand name?
Do we still get that with AI search, or is Google going to give up their golden goose of ad revenue. I'm guessing the adwords feed into the background RAG that influences what the model says.
Why is everything shit
Technofascists really benefit from certain kinds of information being inaccessible…
fascists really love LLM's. like ridiculously in love with them. it's where all their 'art' comes from. it's made of the shallow aesthetics with no interiority they love so much. plus it doesn't really require articulating your desires much, or having artists.
To borrow Alex Jones’ term - it is information warfare. Train people to accept the outputs of LLMs, attack media literacy (in conjunction with the fact that public schools in the US spent ten years not teaching children how to read), and hide actual sources.
You can have your LLM trained to weasel around the fact that the chattel slavery of black Americans was the primary cause of the Civil War, or falsely represent science surrounding gender and sexuality (they’re explicitly tuning Grok on this).
You don’t have to worry about subversive messages on war or women in your “AI” generated “Ghibhli” film. Have all the fun space faring of Star Wars, without the prequel geopolitics everyone hated until they saw it happen.
They did that long before AI.
Google, Apple and plenty others have regular meetings with defense people to accomodate them.
No surprise Eric Schmit left Google to form a defense company since some employees there had a consciense and didn't like working on killer drone programs.
Can it be worse than the sanitised results they give you now?
Yes absolutely
startpage. you're welcome.
it's also not us owned or based.
Startpage is owned by System1 who are based in LA.
Unfortunately it's been sold to the US.
well that's not good :/ sigh
Well you already said I'm welcome, but thank you anyway.
But start page just returns Google and Bing results. If Google stops offering it, then you're left w/ Bing. Microsoft has its own AI thing going, so if Google kills search, so will Microsoft.
This is my choice
Wait, google does searches now too? Wow they have a service for everything.
searxng
I mean their search results have gone to absolute shit anyway, the AI is probably better at this point.
My coworker who has an absolute hard-on for ChatGPT has tried several times in vain to get it to say the correct answer to a question I knew the answer to. LLMs are bullshit engines and toys for the malicious.
Absolute shit results run through an AI gives you even worse absolute shit.
doubt
Been using 4get for some time now, I don't think a search engine can get better than this
I looked into this a while back and came to the conclusion that the dev didn't seem trustworthy. Also, just looking on the homepage, the images it showed me were a dildo with "4get" stuck on it using a sticky note and a modified manga panel about beating women. Not sure I'd want to use something like that in public.
Not sure what I expected. For the equally curious with no foresight:
definitely a dildo with 4get stuck on it using sticky note
Honestly that type of anti-corporate imagery makes me trust them more
yeah, the dev seems kinda like a shitposter ngl (although there are some funny pictures in the front page)
However, I configured it as my default search engine, so I never go to the front page. Also, at least is free and open source (AGPL)
Been using Ecosia for months now. DuckDuckGo and Startpage before that. I'm pretty happy with Ecosia search results, can't complain.
I've been trying and bunch of the recommendations in the comments here with some very specific searches I've had to do this week with Google, and I think Ecosia is my favorite.
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I don't need to care. I stopped using Google search months ago.
Ok, but why should I go to Google for ai answers when I can get the same from openai, other models or even local installations without all the ads?
Unfortunately this isn’t about you, but the 90% of people who don’t understand what AI is at all and don’t give a shit where the responses come from as long as “scorpio dream meaning high school teacher truck” and “can you gregnant with cousin?” Give them answers they like
/s to an extent, but here we are
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