Are there valid Google Search alternatives?

I was a long-term DDG user, across all devices. The search quality wasn't great, but it usually found what I needed. When the results were crap, I'd append a !g to see if Google had anything better.

And the !g became increasingly useless, and DDG's primary results seemed to decline as well, and searching for stuff I knew was out there often didn't actually find stuff it should have.

So I tried Kagi, and ... it's pretty good. It still has bangs, which I like, and its primary results are good.

It's not cheap, but ... I like that it's a straightforward transaction: they don't need to be selling my queries or shoving ads in the results, they just collect my $10 every month.

So ... I recommend giving it a try. The results are good, and the feeling of an honest transaction is good too.

No need to pay for Kagi imo

https://search.brave.com/

+ Own crawler!

+ Nice summary AI

+ Discussion section with Reddit/Spiceworks etc answers

- Bangs work but not as good as ddg

- crypto company, just feels shady

- Ads

https://www.startpage.com/

+ Proxied Google results but sometimes you need that

- Owned by AD company

https://duckduckgo.com/

+Bing + own crawler

+Long running private search

+Bangs!! https://duckduckgo.com/bangs eg type "jazz music!yt" and it will do a youtube search, !s for startpage, !g for google etc

-Relies on Bing

-Ads but can be turned off

https://you.com/ - Combined ChatGPT and web search

I’ve been paying for Kagi for a couple of months so far and I’m pretty happy with it. No ads, not just the usual expected sites, and easy ability to up rank, down rank, or even block sites for future searches.

There’s two options that comes to mind. One is to get better results by avoiding SEO.

E.g. try using “site:Reddit.com Mac text editor”

The other is to use some GPT based system. I’m not a ChatGPT booster, I do think this type of thing it does excel at. Using your query on ChatGPT 3.5 I got the following result.

Some popular Mac text editors for writing include:

1. *TextEdit*: Comes pre-installed on macOS and offers basic functionality.

2. *Sublime Text*: Known for its speed and extensive customization options.

3. *Visual Studio Code*: A free, open-source code editor that's highly extensible for writing and coding.

4. *Atom*: Another free, open-source text editor with a strong community and numerous plugins.

5. *BBEdit*: A feature-rich text editor for more advanced users.

6. *Ulysses*: A writing app with a clean, distraction-free interface and organization tools.

7. *Scrivener*: Great for long-form writing projects like novels or research papers.

8. *iA Writer*: Known for its minimalistic design and focus mode for distraction-free writing.

The best one for you depends on your specific needs, preferences, and whether you're writing code or prose.

I think that "for writing" is incredibly generic and a terrible search term. If you were talking to a human being about this, and you clarified that you weren't simply looking for text editors, but text editors "for writing", I would tell you that you hadn't clarified anything at all. Do you think one doesn't "write code"?

You might as well had said "for typing". And even THAT might have implied voice vs keyboard.

Pay for Kagi. It's worth it.

Kagi is great if you're willing to pay. DuckDuckGo is...okay if you aren't.

3rd result in Kagi is a link to "The best Mac apps for writers and authors | AppleInsider" that lists OmniOutliner, Drafts 5, Ulysses, etc.

Maybe "best word processor for mac" is a better search for you?

I have not used Google since they had their IPO. It's been quite a few years now.

I've tried most of the others, and I never feel any need to use Google. Once in a while I switch search engines from one brand to another just to break habits and discover new stuff. Sometimes I combine engines for one specific search, but it's very rare that I don't find a result I can use.

These days Brave Search is quite good - it's the only US based SE I use currently. Bing isn't bad either but I prefer the uncluttered view that Brave has. I haven't used Yahoo Search for a few years, so can't comment on that one.

DDG isn't very interesting to me, but thats just personal preferences. Also, stuff like this [0] rubs me quite the wrong way

Others I like better include, say

    - Quant
    - Ecosia
    - Mojeek
    - Dogpile
    - Yandex
    - Fireball
    - MetaGer
    - Glowstery
    - Swisscows

Most (almost all) of these are European. I included Dogpile which is American just for the nostalgia - I rarely use other US SEs than Brave.

When feeling experimental I have sometimes also dabbled a little with the likes of YaCy and SearcX

[0] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/22/04/15/2057253/duckduckgo-r...

Kagi has been worth paying for myself.

I haven’t used Google Search in so many years that I can’t recall when I last used it. I’ve been using DuckDuckGo and it has always found what I’m looking for. Maybe I’m missing out on some results, but I have no way to know without double checking on Google, but I’ve always been satisfied with the results I’ve received and have seen no need to go looking elsewhere.

I used DuckDuckGo from 2018 until Brave Search came out. I know HN seems to be mixed on Brave Browser but their search has been great for me so far. And necroforest is right, you probably just need a more appropriate search query; "text editor" is almost universally understood as code editor nowadays.

I can't agree more, Google just doesn't cut it anymore, it's pretty terrible these days.

As well as DuckDuckGo I use StartPage, https://www.startpage.com/, and Mojeek, https://www.mojeek.com/, they're not a universal panacea but they often find items that Google doesn't find. I'm surprised how good they can be given they're much smaller operations.

The secret is to break the habit of using only one search engine. To save time I use multiple browsers with a different search engine as homepage on each. Moving between each is quick and easy.

Using multiple browsers also reduces tracking/fingerprinting, etc.

No one mentioned `uBlacklist` extension but complaining about ranking of the results and noises (seems like all are Kagi advertisers somehow). You can block all the noises and unwanted results from search based on its base URL; keep only from those you tried and found useful. The block list can be synced with your own local/cloud storage. For example, block all those copycats of stack, photos from .pinterest., gettyimages, microsoft's official forum, apple official forum, shitty porn sites,...

G's quality has gone down drastically over the years. Back in 2017-18-19 it was unmatched. These days you have to use all sorts of hackery to get it to find what you need. And that goes for most google products I'm afraid. At this point their phones and gcp are the only product I don't have complaints about. Don't get me wrong, I still use google for searching but it's becoming increasingly irritating to mix quotes, explicit inclusions and exclusions and all that. I've been fiddling about with Kagi and I gotta say, it does behave like google used to 5 years ago. I feel like I'm not far from becoming a paying customer.

Yandex gave relevant results for me for your query

> I then searched "best mac text editors for writing"

If you change "for writing" to "for writers", you would get more appropriate results from Google.

duck duck go and kagi are the only 2 real options

i pay the 10 for kagi and I'm happy with it. tons of ability to customize searches

You could try searching for what you want directly, instead of trying to modify the meaning of something else. E.g. [best writing apps] seems to work well in Google and DDG.

"Text editor" is well established as a term for plain text, like code.

I've used DDG for about 5 years and I literally haven't thought about it since I changed. Now I just ask the machine gods (GPT4) about most shit I would have googled. If I want citations I hook it up to academic search engines.

ChatGPT-4 did answer relatively well but definitely not a search engine.

I attempted to search for "best Mac text editors for writers" on Google, but I received a bunch of results with "writers" crossed out.

Yeah the situation is quite bleak.

I stopped using Google 5 years ago. The combination of SEO blogspam dominating the first page results, and the mass surveillance they engage in, made me want to change. I don't miss it, it has many worthy replacements.

My thoughts on the search engines things I tried:

0. Bing: pretty much the same as Google, I stopped using it for privacy reasons. I'd use it if I was a Linux user and MS didn't have my Windows activity to cross-reference Bing data with.

1. DuckDuckGo: was a great alternative, until I found out last year they censor search results for political reasons (downranking/delisting "Russian misinformation"). I dropped them then.

2. Brave: pretty good most of the time, the one I trust the most for privacy, but too many counterculture sites not listed. Like you search for a meme and the results are not some major sites. Is fine otherwise.

3. Yandex: great search results but I stopped using it because despite only doing 10-15 searches a day, I trip their bot detection (I use Firefox configured to resist fingerprinting, uBlock Origin, etc). If I was your basic b*tch "Chrome user watching 1000 ads a day", I'd stick to this.

Google remains the best one for location-aware search, such as local businesses.

Just FYI, the direct answer to your question (about text editors) is Typora:

https://typora.io/

Kagi looks pretty good

I've been happily paying for kagi for over a year now.

Bard https://bard.google.com/ or ChatGPT.

Kagi is better for technical searches. I don't think there's a competitor for everyday searching though.

I’m a fan of Bing.

But your issue is in your search term. Nobody but programmers would ever call a thing a “text editor”. And “for writing” changes nothing: I use VSCode “for writing” code. With “macos writing app” the results are far superior.

(source: I used to make “a text editor” for a living and I can tell you that 0% of the population understands what that means, “It’s like microsoft word, except instead of writing text documents you write the code to create computer programs” gets you pretty far tho)

I pay for Kagi and couldn't be happier. I'm still trying to convert my wife, who actually likes seeing the ads.

Marginalia, perhaps?

Honestly, I like the Bing search engine. They at least give me points in exchange for tracking me, and I cash those in for Amazon credit.

I would love to have a search engine, though, that would actually include all the terms that I type in, exactly as I typed it. It's such a simple concept, I can't believe that it's not an option!

Brave search.

Kagi is shit. Use kagi if you use godaddy. Startpage uses google. https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-...

You might consider the possibility that your query was just not very good, and you should have put some effort into fixing it.

Why are you searching specifically for "mac text editors for writing"? Why not for example "mac apps for writing" or "mac word processors for writing"?

Likewise, what are you writing if not code? Literature? Academic papers? A screenplay? Notes to yourself? Even another human can't guess this correctly, let alone the search engine. Only you know it. Put that detail into the query!

Also, I don't know that you should ever search for the "best" anything. That word alone is pretty much guaranteed to get you just SEO listicles or marketing pages.