←back to thread

Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

(www.theverge.com)
598 points leotravis10 | 7 comments | 04 Sep 25 15:30 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
Show context
3036e4 ◴[04 Sep 25 19:18 UTC] No.45131172[source]▶
An unexpected side-effect for me after I started subscribing to Kagi a few months ago, at a low tier with limited searches, is that I made sure to configure all my browsers with keywords for Wikipedia searches and I use those a lot, knowing that what I will end up with after searching is probably going to be the Wikipedia page anyway. No point wasting precious limited monthly searches.
replies(1): >>45135419 #
1. manquer ◴[05 Sep 25 06:02 UTC] No.45135419[source]▶
Kagi does not count bangs as part of monthly usage - for wiki that would be !w search term

https://help.kagi.com/kagi/plans/plan-types.html#how-searche...

replies(1): >>45135949 #
2. BlueTemplar ◴[05 Sep 25 07:34 UTC] No.45135949[source]▶
I'm still puzzled after all these years : why would anyone use search engine bangs instead of directly configuring custom searches from their browser's URL bar ?
replies(3): >>45137334 #>>45137399 #>>45139365 #
3. macintux ◴[05 Sep 25 11:25 UTC] No.45137334[source]▶
Because I know how to use search engine bangs, and I have no idea what a “custom search” would look like.

After probably 15 years of using DDG the bangs are just part of my muscle memory. Why bother changing things?

replies(1): >>45147818 #
4. danhor ◴[05 Sep 25 11:36 UTC] No.45137399[source]▶
It takes a bit of effort to add all you would want and, for me personally, bangs can be anywhere instead of having to be at the start of a search query as is needed for custom search keywords.
replies(1): >>45147825 #
5. freediver ◴[05 Sep 25 15:00 UTC] No.45139365[source]▶
Bangs through Kagi work cross-device, on every browser you use whether it supports custom searches or not.
6. BlueTemplar ◴[06 Sep 25 09:21 UTC] No.45147818{3}[source]▶
Well, my question then is why didn't you use custom search before DDG added bangs ?

Today in Firefox : right click on a search field, add search engine. Pretty sure that this evolved from that separate search field that browsers used to have in addition to the URL field ?

7. BlueTemplar ◴[06 Sep 25 09:23 UTC] No.45147825{3}[source]▶
Well, it would take effort to add custom bangs too, it's not like DDG has pre-made bangs for every website...