Hello fellow lemmings,
I was a wiz at google in the early 2000s. I would find obscure forums for every interest and usually get some pretty good info. My research skills haven’t aged well, and I’d like to get a bit more with it.
I use:
- Rtings, for TVs and monitors
- Consumer reports, for <500
- Sites like scamreport where people rant about shitty companies not living up to their promises
- glassdoor, to see what a company’s employees think and how they are treated
How do you research your purchases when there is so much AI slop out there and google doesn’t really work right anymore. Duck duck go and bing are marginally better. Are there trusted impartial review sites?
Reddit, and hopefully Lemmy will get there too ;)
Also, I quite like using Kagi search engine (paid) for its neat features. Things like
I’ve been using Kagi for almost a full year (it is supposed to renew in a couple days) and I’ve been loving every instant using it. Like really.
That said, it’s not cheap. Here in Europe (I live in France), it’s 130€ a year (tax-included) for their second-best plan, and I have not yet decided to renew because of that cost. So, the last couple weeks I’ve been forcing myself to use the search engines I used before Kagi to see how well it went (startpage & qwant, mainly). And, yeah, I already miss Kagi a lot ;)
I’ve seen this in various threads on Lemmy. I’m sure Kagi has some cool features, but I don’t know how any search engine can overcome the walled garden effect that is plaguing the internet today. The data just isn’t out there to be curated anymore, it’s locked behind the hedges of the different sites.
I think search might have been killed. I expect in my lifetime, we’ll have to sign all our communications using encryption to keep algorithms from impersonating us online to trick people into buying stuff. I’m kind if surprised there isn’t an organized resistance collecting legit reviews.
I 'm pretty sure you’re 100% right and that’s where we’re heading. It has already started but we’re not there, yet.
I’m convinced too that in a not too distant future I’ll be witnessing (and I’m 50+ year-old) almost all content will be put behind pretty and comfy walls but walls nonetheless, with doors and locks on them we wont own the keys (btw, that’s the reason why I completely quit posting on reddit, as I explained here I refuse them putting any walls around the only valuable stuff they have ever owned, our content). But we’re not there, yet. I mean, the Web is still not that walled garden and, so far, Kagi has also been working more than fine (they even try promoting an alternative, for example with their ‘small web’ feature).
How it is working now is the reason why I’m (was paying? As I’ve yet to decide to renew, in less than two days). I pay for how fine kagi is working today, not how it will be working in the future. The day they stop being relevant, I’ll stop using them (like I quit using Google search many years ago). Will I be sad? No idea, what I know is that I’ll be a lot more sad for what the Web will have finally turned into.
Imho, as of now, Kagi is simply too small for the big sites or for the other engines to be worth worrying with them.
At this time there are less than 35k paying members/users (they publish their stats but seeing how some people can be jerk when one is mentioning their appreciation for a paid product I think it’s safer to not share a link. It should be easy to find, though). Considering their size, I imagine it’s not like they represent a threat to anyone’s business. They’re just a tiny, tiny alternative, and a paying one at that! Something that will not help them grow fast, if at all.
Nice sales pitch.
Your comment is almost exclusively about kagi and not about an answer to ops question.
If someone spends money to use a search engine, they will find a way to force that search engine into any conversation they can. It’s like how if you spend thousands on a bottle of wine, you’ll show that bottle off whenever you have guests over.
The OP asked:
That is was what I answered to. That said, I agree my answer is not ‘Vet’ specific. So, maybe I was wrong in explaining why I decided to use a paid search engine in order to get usable, quick, not AI-infested and as topic specific as I want them to be results? I don’t think so, but anyone is welcome to disagree.
Also, not being native English speaker I considered the OP ‘Vet Products’ was referring to ‘veterinany products’ (something I could ignore in my suggestion as being a tad too specific), was I wrong?
That being said, I sincerely want to thank you for taking the time to tell me your point of view as, since I posted my comment earlier I was a bit perplexed by the few downvotes it received. Now, I get it or maybe I still don’t, but at the very least I have some clue why it’s happening :)
Edit: rephrased the first sentence in a more correct English. Hopefully.
Sorry for being unclear about the way I used “vet” in the title. I can see how that was misleading a little bit. I wanted to hear honest opinions, so if you really like Kagi, I’m happy to hear about it. It’s hard enough to find info right now that we may soon is the opportunity to be picky about our information.
Don’t be. It happens all the time and that’s fine. That said, thx a lot for taking the time. Also note that I’m still not sure it was what you meant. Was it? ;)
Please, do consider my entire comment not just a part of it. What I said is that I do indeed like it a lot and also that I find it expensive and I’m not sure I will renew when time comes. Time which happens to be today and, yep, I’m as unsure today.
People habit of naysaying or belittling opinions they don’t agree with makes it even harder to find any trustful info but that’s how things work nowadays, that and a seemingly constant drive to try to hurt others through our words.
Regarding Kagi, they have a free test plan, it’s limited but it will give you an idea if it’s worth anything to you when you want to search for some info you can trust… and it won’t matter what I can say, or what any other of the persons speaking in this discussion I apparently started by daring say I liked to use a paid-for service to do my searches. Decide by yourself, that’s all you need to get a trustworthy opinion :)