Kagi is the best search engine I've seen since the early days of Google search--back when Google just returned links to websites most likely to provide the information you were searching for rather than keeping you one the page and serving you advertisements.

I'm not being compensated to share this information. I not a fan of promoting, for free, any non-Black-owned profit-driven corporation. I'm spreading the word here because I believe in the spirit of the product.

I have little hope that the product will catch on for a variety of reasons--most notably after 100 searches in a month. You have to pay for the service and people don't like paying for anything--even if it is important.

The reality is search was never free.

"Everyone pays for search. The difference is whether you're paying with your attention, time, and private data - or with your wallet."

Kagi: https://kagi.com/ is a search engine that is supported by members, not advertisers. This makes a BIG difference in search results.

I don't really use Google Search very much anymore; their search engine results page especially for book related content is just horrendous. Try finding an author's official website. You get a bazillion Amazon links, social media, and walk away thinking that the authors does not have a website. Kagi returns the author's official website right up front!

Lately I've been using Bing, because every month or so I get a $10 gift card to Amazon., but you have to run A LOT of queries (and I do). The search results are not great, but they are usually good enough. When searching for video Bing like to embed YouTube video in the search engine results page and serve ads -- which I hate; plus it makes it much harder to find a video on sites like sites like AALBC who have moved away from giving YouTube our video content.

At the end of the day Google was screwed up with WWW with their search engine. Companies like Kagi, Duck Duck Go, and others promise to make things better.

Of course, if you cannot afford to pay for search, that introduces a new problem but that one is more easily solved than the ones were have to deal with currently.

I used to use Ixquick then it became Startpage. I found it better than Google Similarly I used to use Borland instead of Microsoft. Now I use OpenOffice

Never liked the big dog. There were always better alternatives.

In all earnest, the web directory is the best model, it isn't just keywords relating to content but also the quality of the website. the web search does away with the quality standard.

Directories definitely had their time but the problem with them is they simply don’t scale.

I remember when the search engine Altavista came along I stopped using directories at that point.

Then Google came along and blew what I thought was a great search engine (altavista) out the water. Google was great until they chose a model based upon advertising if they could’ve charged folks a few bucks a month they would’ve had a nice business they may have even become billionaires, but now that was not enough.

Then a huge industry emerged of people gaming, googles algorithm to rank higher and search. Some of these were quite effective too. I remember once site copied all of my content and was beating me in search! That still happens today while met with my entire site some of my content for sure.

AI did exactly the same thing., but at scale. Again, AI will gut the Internet. Steal from all types of content from creators, artists, writers, musicians, you name it monetize or and never compensate the original creators.

The bullshit lawsuits won’t do a damn thing to stem the tide.

Post-industrial revolution, existing & emerging technologies fuel capitalism.

G**gle is the king of search engines. That won't stop small players from trying to stake a claim in the game.

The objective under capitalism is to make as much money as possible by any means necessary.😎

@admin

14 hours ago, admin said:

Directories definitely had their time but the problem with them is they simply don’t scale.

IT is interesting, I argue, the directory developers were not good programmers. Like many systems, from email to directories to large language models that are the basis for the commonly called AI the programmers were and are poor. Everything they create is speed based but not efficient based, andI do comprehend that working for the private sector with the investment firms constantly hounding for what they are owed aside the publicly traded mechanism who are filled with those constantly hounding for increased revenue, this falls upon programmers to be focused on speed over efficiency, sequentially the search engine is preferred over the directory.

But I think the directories needed smarter algorithms.

The question is why didn't web directories scale?

The reason why is the web directories weren't designed to let their usage have a role to play in the categorization. For example, the internet was flooded with websites , from humans or non humans, at a high speed secondly, as the internet has global usage at all hours, sequentially having a manual categorization even with twenty four hour cycles will never keep up with the rate of creation, what you say is a failure to scale. But, i see it as a simply problem of categorixzation. They could had inputted the uncategorized websites in the directory in an expansive category designed to grow but not to be rated. So, all the websites online are in. Then, let the users of the directory dictate the quality rating. How so? for example, when someone types, an authors name, the website of the author will not be in the rated category if it was just put in a half hour before the query. but if it is in the unrated category, the directory can simply state it doesn't have a rated directory entry for the author and then display best search case, based on the index words for the website. And then if a user clicks it, it gets a positive search rating but not a quality rating.

Thus the directory will have two segments, rated + unrated, the rated is curated, tested, proven, assured, grown manually. The unrated is grown programattically, but all of its entries are rated with the lowest value and only vary from each other by traffic usage, and when one reaches a certain quality of traffic it will be tested onto the rated segment.

This way the scaling aspect you and other speak about happens while the quality of the directory isn't diminished. All it requires is a modulating algorithm which can be adjusted for various factors to qualify when one from the unrated can be brought into the rated.

What is my final argument? yes, the internet has tons of many different websites and addresses but i argue, most of them or at least 99% of websites or webpages , do not warrant being placed into a rated directory, by quality of the page or website or the traffic to said site or page.

But again, I Comprehend the larger problem with my strategic approach.

search engine optimization from the search engines allows for two key financial aspects, one people can pay for better rating in the optimization and two the influence of low quality social media content on wealthy websites can push through search engine optimization.

My directory system as i described has a manual system for the best content, and places the rest as available but ranked equally, no matter their quality which doesn't allow for businesses to pay for a better rating or position in the directory, and thus losses the financial avenue that the search engine optimization provides.

14 hours ago, admin said:

AI did exactly the same thing., but at scale. Again, AI will gut the Internet. Steal from all types of content from creators, artists, writers, musicians, you name it monetize or and never compensate the original creators.

I know artists who had work stolen by humans so the computer programs called ai, designed to scrape and use simply do it faster But, when you say monetize, you mean the humans or some humans are getting ai money. ai's don't actually monetize right? are you suggesting AI's have bank accounts? Even if AI's do, what do they do with their money?

14 hours ago, admin said:

The bullshit lawsuits won’t do a damn thing to stem the tide.

lawsuits aren't bullshit, don't knock the power of lawsuits and in modernity all countries including the china's and russia's of the world have legal systems even though many in the usa don't seem to think they do. The lawsuits may not manipulate the programs but they will manipulate the firms that made or operate the programs and that will lead to an interesting thing. This is why the AI firms want protection, they want protection because even if computer programs can't go to court, the humans who made them or their owners can and they can lose everything in court. Remember, the Social media firms got away with that nonsense, the federal government gave them a protection from lawsuit cause it was coming and i argue should had occurred.

@ProfD

3 hours ago, ProfD said:

The objective under capitalism is to make as much money as possible by any means necessary.😎

Yes, but I wish we all would also add that the usa is taking away the risk element. One part of fiscal capitalism is making money by nay means necessary The Other part and I Argue most important in modernity is the losing property or other valuables when one fails to make money.

From 1990 to 2026 we have all witnessed the entire banking industry collapse, the entire real estate industry collapsed three times i think, the entire automotive industry collapsed, the airline industry hasn't recovered since pan am was lawsuited out of existence, the arms makes like boeing and lockheed martin are all bankrupt. All the major industries in the usa are bakrupt. the film industry and entertainment industry is bankrupt, thus all the mergers. Now all of these industries have been saved by discretionary policy but discretionary policy isn't fiscal capitalism. Discretionary policy as used in the usa isn't about fiscal capitalims but macroeconomics. And the usa is showing that regardless of fiscal capitalistic quality, since all of the industries in the usa have failed completely within my lifetime, a macroeconomic protectionism , in terms of bailouts/monetary injections or other similars , all supported by a militaristic quality , which the usa doesn't have the ability to extend, allows for negative fiscal capitalistic quality to be protected.

yes, kill people for their land, enslave other people for cheapest labor... yes, by any means necessary. But what people miss today is the safety net.

Unwarranted macroeconomic protectionism keeps the fiscal capitalistic activity in the usa organized, notice i didnt' say positive or negative, regardless of its fiscal capitalistic quality in the USA.

to me Unwarranted Macroeconomic protectionism is the correct label for the usa today, to suggest the usa is acting as fiscal capitalistic I argue is unwarranted when all the industries have failed or are failing in modern memory. Fiscal capitalism isn't just making as much money as possible it is losing money when you fail to make money, it is others buying your assets when you go bankrupt. That is important you know. When black people were enslaved, whites in the usa went bankrupt and other whites would buy what other whites formerly owned. I just dont see how the industries in the usa are making money. I Argue they all are in the red, and are simply being propped up by welfare checks.

Unwarranted Macroeconomic protectionism is keeping the organization, the haves and have nots, financial alignment of the various demographs consistent in the usa. But unwarranted macroeconomic protectionism is not fiscal capitalism. I argue it is a monarchic system ,and monarchic systems are not about money but military power. And human history proves that little countries can have far better fiscal capitalistic quality than bigger countries, ala holland next to its peers in europe, but those bigger peers are still stronger militaristically and that militaristic might has its own influence. But I repeat that power is not a symbol of fiscal capitalism , simply a symbol of militaristic power.