10mo ago

Google's new AI search results promotes sites pushing malware, scams

www.bleepingcomputer.com Google's new AI search results promotes sites pushing malware, scams

Google's new AI-powered 'Search Generative Experience' algorithms recommend scam sites that redirect visitors to unwanted Chrome extensions, fake iPhone giveaways, browser spam subscriptions, and tech support scams.

(In the case that someone in Lemmy still use Google)

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62 comments

What to use for search engine. Even ddg is not giving reliable results.
- If you believe Google is the most reliable, you can still use it in a private way via :
  Startpage
  Startpage is a private search engine known for serving Google and Bing search results. One of Startpage's unique features is the Anonymous View, which puts forth efforts to standardize user activity to make it more difficult to be uniquely identified. The feature can be useful for hiding some network and browser properties.
  
  https://www.startpage.com/
  SearxNG https://searxng.org/
  SearXNG is an open-source, self-hostable, metasearch engine, aggregating the results of other search engines while not storing any information itself.
  
  There's plenty of public instances too https://searx.space/
  Whoogle https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search
  Get Google search results, but without any ads, JavaScript, AMP links, cookies, or IP address tracking. Easily deployable in one click as a Docker app, and customizable with a single config file.
  
  Couple of public instances too. Basically SearxNG with ONLY google as a source. https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search#public-instances
  
  I'm pretty sure Startpage got sold out to an ad company. I think the best option is just to use SearxNG
  
  They do, but it's still separated from that business. At worse, it's more an ethical issue of using something that an Ad company own, exactly like using Google with or without proxies services. https://web.archive.org/web/20210118031008/https://blog.privacytools.io/relisting-startpage/
  
  Thank you
  Any alternative to Google Alerts?
  Long time looking for such service which monitors web for keywords.
- I've been happy with Kagi. It's for-pay but it's quality to me.
  
  It’s just a bit too expensive imo.
  
  For something I use constantly every day $10 is nothing
  
  but for something you never use $10 is quite a lot.
  
  $5/mo. If that's too pricey deal with shit 🤷‍♂️.
  
  Be nice, this isn't the app next door.
  
  That's fair. Like the sibling comment says, it's worth it for me. But not everyone has the ability to pay.
  
  The old saying goes: if you don't pay for the product, you are the product.
  
  Yeah, still too expensive tho
  
  Yeah, but $10 a month is a lot. And the $5 plan for only 300 searches a month goes by really fast if you have to do any kind of research for anything. Even for trying to figure out what brand of something to buy, you blow through those searches super quick.
  
  Yup, I'd pay maybe $1. That's way more than the ad revenue search engines get, so it's a more than reasonable price to pay.
  
  maybe $1. That's way more than the ad revenue search engines get
  And where did you come up with this info? Source? Do you really think that search engine ad revenue (for the engine itself, not what one measly advertiser gets back) tops out at "way below" $1 per person?
  In 2023, Google's ad search revenue amounted to 175 billion U.S. dollars.
  
  They've said that it costs them 1.5 cents to answer a search query, so that dollar a month wouldn't go very far. I probably incidentally run 40-50 searches a day between my devices... $10 is a value that works for me.
  I've been using Kagi as my default since June, and don't plan on stopping anytime soon.
  
  That sounds unlikely... But they're a small search provider with a small customer base, so costs will be high maintaining all the infrastructure needed.
  As I linked elsewhere, Bing makes ~$10 per user per year. That's really close to my $1/month figure. And that's revenue, which doesn't count advertiser acquisition costs and whatnot.
  I'm unwilling to pay $5/month for limited searches, but I'm willing to pay for search if it's reasonable.
  
  That doesn't mean the price has to be the same as a fucking Netflix subscription.
  Which service uses more computation? Streaming HQ video to millions of people, or running a search engine. Keep in mind, search engines have existed since basically before the internet in some form or another...
  
  Well, it costs Kagi about 1.5 cents to answer a search query. Consider how many searches you use in a month to determine how much they're making off you at $10/mo.
  I'm lucky enough to be in a position to be able to pay for products that I use, instead of relying on freemium, or ad-supported, or data-mined, or pirated products. That hasn't always been the case for me, so I don't judge anyone for making a different choice.
  
  If they're taking in less than 1000 searches of money for 3000 searches, the numbers still aren't adding up. Someone is misinformed or the product still.
  
  Same here, happy Kagi subscriber 👍
- DDG queries can't really be written the same way you'd write one in Google if you're after effective results. It'll take some time to get used to it, tbh I was using DDG alongside Google until I fully switched.
  
  I keep reading that Google’s search results are supposedly much better than DDG’s when my experience is the exact opposite. I don’t even live in an English speaking country and the results I get are a vast improvement over Google’s. It has been this way for me since at least last year, but in my experience DDG had caught up to Google in 2022 already. It could also be that Google has just deteriorated a lot in the last two years (which it definitely has, judging by all the bad publicity they’ve been getting for it), so I’d urge you to give DDG/Brave Search/Bing/Kagi/SearxNG another chance.
  I’d also recommend setting an alternative of your choice as the default everywhere and to use it exclusively for like a week before making up your mind about that specific product!
  
  Do you mean grammar-wise, or special operators?
  
  Grammar, I've noticed I get much better results if I word things more directly instead of like a question
  
  They probably mean grammar, since most Google operators do work. If there's a specific difference in search syntax (other than bangs) though, I'd love to know what I've been missing.
- I use mainly Andisearch, also has AI but relay on reliable sources (and one of the most privat search out there), Startpage and Whoogle use the old Google search engine, Mojeek also is fine, Groot search has a own search index, Etools a Suiss made Metasearch engine and some more. In the Vivaldi Forum you'll find the, maybe, most complete list of search engines you can try.
  
  Whoa! You weren't kidding about that list of search engines. What's with the Germans and search engines? They sure do have a lot.
  
  The author of th Thread is German, he icluded because of this also searches in German media sites or dictionaries. But if you want a German search engine, you can use MetaGer, not bad at all. Good privacy but freemium, in the free version there are ads, (context, anonymous) and limited on 2 search engines.
  
  Hah! I in fact have been using metager for a couple of months now as my defult search engine, since I saw it recommended in Lemmy those 2 months ago. Works great. Tried kagi before but I just don't search that much and paying per search makes much more sense to me.
- Kagi. It's better here.
  
  Not sure who's down voting you, its quite a valid option that, unlike google, is actually innovating in interesting ways.

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