Between Kagi and Perplexity AI, I haven't bothered with Google search in over a year and I don't miss it at all. I'm wondering if other HN users are using Google search, and if not, which alternatives are you using?
I switched to Kagi a few months ago and I’m generally happy with it. However, I still need to occasionally use Google for some very specific searches that Kagi doesn’t handle (or handles incorrectly).
E.g I can’t do timezone conversions with Kagi. I know I could just use an app for this, but it’s far quicker to type “10:30am EST to IST” into my browser’s address bar than to reach for yet another app.
Another thing Kagi doesn’t do yet is currency conversion. Once again, it might be easier/more accurate to use an app for this, but I usually just need a ballpark conversion and searching Google is quicker than using an app.
I live in India but my clients are often in the US. I also have a lot of friends/family living across the world. I suspect I do timezone/currency conversions roughly 8-10 times during a regular work day. This is why I still end up on Google Search despite not liking that company or their software one bit.
There is a chrome extension for everything. OPs point is (and I agree) that these things you only need once in a while are incredibly useful when they are only a search away. Installing a chrome extension for a few uses every other week is way too much effort.
I have been trying to move away from Google for a long time. Kagi is what finally made that successful.
About 6 months ago my browsers default reverted to Google for some reason (probably something the IT department pushed out). I didn’t pay attention to the page header and when my eyes jumped down the page I physically recoiled at how bad things were. Bad results and useless junk everywhere. I looked up and saw it was Google. I truly don’t know how anyone still uses that site and considers it good.
Yes, but more and more I'm finding Google useless and just using ChatGPT for questions where appropriate (as opposed to links). They seem to be broadening the interpretation of the words I type so much it's useless. Using double quote operators (" ") only helps sometimes. Then the results you do get are just Quora and other useless blogspam and sites that don't actually show you what it said in the preview.
less and less. Most of the times i use bing's copilot to answer my needings and then from there on, I check on the links it shows me. Most of the times its sufficient for me. Big GOOGs results do not satisfy me anymore: The interpretation and overlooking of my searchwords is not an feature.
I mostly use Bing search or Perplexity for my searches these days.
- Bing for quick searches (as it is my browser default; I switched to Bing almost 4 years ago and never went back to Google Chrome).
- When I really want to dig into something, then I generally do a parallel search on both, Bing and Perplexity. But I am doing more and more perplexity searches these days.
- But my major use case for Google back in the 2012-2017 era was for searching code for code-related problems. That is completely replaced by 2 things: 1. My efficiency in reading and understanding official documentations; and 2. Direct questions to CodyAI (by SourceGraph) directly from within VSCode.
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E.g I can’t do timezone conversions with Kagi. I know I could just use an app for this, but it’s far quicker to type “10:30am EST to IST” into my browser’s address bar than to reach for yet another app.
Another thing Kagi doesn’t do yet is currency conversion. Once again, it might be easier/more accurate to use an app for this, but I usually just need a ballpark conversion and searching Google is quicker than using an app.
I live in India but my clients are often in the US. I also have a lot of friends/family living across the world. I suspect I do timezone/currency conversions roughly 8-10 times during a regular work day. This is why I still end up on Google Search despite not liking that company or their software one bit.
About 6 months ago my browsers default reverted to Google for some reason (probably something the IT department pushed out). I didn’t pay attention to the page header and when my eyes jumped down the page I physically recoiled at how bad things were. Bad results and useless junk everywhere. I looked up and saw it was Google. I truly don’t know how anyone still uses that site and considers it good.
I feel spoiled used Kagi. It’s so good.
ChatGPT is vastly more helpful, and perplexity may be even better, although I haven't made that a habit as yet.
I haven’t had a need to go to google for a very long time.
- Bing for quick searches (as it is my browser default; I switched to Bing almost 4 years ago and never went back to Google Chrome).
- When I really want to dig into something, then I generally do a parallel search on both, Bing and Perplexity. But I am doing more and more perplexity searches these days.
- But my major use case for Google back in the 2012-2017 era was for searching code for code-related problems. That is completely replaced by 2 things: 1. My efficiency in reading and understanding official documentations; and 2. Direct questions to CodyAI (by SourceGraph) directly from within VSCode.
It's also somehow good to find pdf files with "filetype:pdf".
As already mentioned, the occasional currency and time conversions are also pretty nice. I admit I use their calculator too sometimes.
Essentially, Google advanced search operators have been a pretty powerful feature that I've been using since I learned about it in 2011.
Other than that, I agree the generic search result are a bloody mess.
For a lot of other searches, GPT 4 helps a lot.