Not a technical person, as I understand it, Google and Bing are full search engines while options like Seaexng, Ecosia, Duckduckgo are meta search engine that depend on Google or Bing. Are there other search engines that are fully independent, and if there aren’t, what are the barriers that stop other search engines from emerging
Yes there is. Kagi is probally the most well known I can think of, and even that still uses Google and Bing as secondary sources.
The biggest barriers is data/context. The biggest being the primary index.
Google has a lot of web scrapers/indexers and also offers hosting platforms. They also partner with big hosting companies for index trees to be able to easily show web sites reliably AND have been around for years finding it.
This is sadly also one of the primary damages that AI is currently doing to the internet field, because not only is it decreasing web traffic for web hosts due to AI summaries and searches, but it’s also forcing web hosts to have to block or restrict indexers. Which is making it even harder to establish search platforms. Because these same agents are abusing the user agent system to try to pretend that it’s a normal indexer, so web hosts are faced with either having their platform spammed so many bot traffic that it takes their website down, or block indexers, which means that they don’t appear in web searches. It’s a lose lose.
This is sadly also one of the primary damages that AI is currently doing to the internet field, because not only is it decreasing web traffic for web hosts due to AI summaries and searches, but it’s also forcing web hosts to have to block or restrict indexers
Not to mention the damage it’s doing to content quality, as websites become increasingly written in a way that’s meant to optimise for AI placement, and are increasingly being populated with content written by an AI in the first place. Information, written by machines, for machines. It’s depressing as hell (and hard to see how it ultimately helps engage real actual people, who seem to be an afterthought sometimes).
Thanks for this. Its very detailed. I heard abt Kagi but I thought it was a meta search engine, thanks for the clarification.
Thanks for letting me know about the barriers ad well and the current damage ai companies are doing. Hopefully, we’ll think of something to beat back the ai companies and Google
Well, you gotta index the whole internet
Before you can make an apple pie from scratch. Or something.
I’ve not used it, but have heard decent things about Kagi, a paid search engine. Supposedly, it finds things like how old Yahoo or old Google worked, without AI (but is optionally available?), and no ads.
I would think the major barrier to entry is the business model: ad revenue goes to those that can deliver results. Google AdSense has dominated that realm for years, so it would take a major upfront investment to challenge them on that. Not much different than how it’s hard to compete with established airlines to a particular airport that they already serve. Economies of scale tend towards consolidation.
I’ve been using Lite Duckduckgo. It gives 10 text link per page. No video, shorts, pictures, ads. Just link. Someone on lemmy mentioned it and I’ve been using it since.
That’s a good thing to know about!
The usual example is Kagi.
I made a video about a few others this week: UDM-14 (Though, note that UDM-14 is basically just google search with a different overlay and no ads/ai), Mojeek, and Marginalia. (Though Marginalia focuses on non-commercial content and is a little different.)
Mojeek is an option I’ve not seen others mention:
deleted by creator
Brave delivers results from its own, built-from-scratch index.
Lemmy has an unhealthy obsession with shiting on Brave. (Responding to your downvotes)
Brave Search privacy notice
Brave Search is designed to be private by default. We don’t collect personal information about you, your device or your searches. We also don’t transmit information to the web that could be used to profile you or track you or learn anything about you. Your searches are private to YOU.
