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Building a Simple Search Engine That Works

(karboosx.net)
279 points freediver | 2 comments | 17 Nov 25 03:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.498s | source
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shevy-java ◴[17 Nov 25 08:36 UTC] No.45951831[source]▶
Good. Now please someone replace Google's search engine.

I am always annoyed using it, how bad it is these days. Then I try the alternatives such as Duck Duck Go and they manage to be even worse.

Qwant is semi-ok but it also omits tons of things that Google Search finds (and also is slower, for some weird reason).

Google's UI nerf is also annoying - so much useless stuff. In the past I could disable that via ublock origin but Google killed that for chrome.

We need to do something against this Evil that Google brought into this world.

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MrAlex94 ◴[17 Nov 25 09:29 UTC] No.45952104[source]▶
Not quite independent as it’s a meta-search, but I developed a subscription based one at search.waterfox.net. Pays for the infrastructure costs and remains ad/tracking free.
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1. SyneRyder ◴[17 Nov 25 10:55 UTC] No.45952500[source]▶
Nice! I couldn't see the list of search engines that are included in your meta-search, the FAQ currently seems to imply that it only serves Google results?

If you give users the option to include / not include certain search engines in their results, so their money never goes to those particular engine companies, that could be of interest to some Kagi refugees.

I ended up vibe coding my own meta-search engine (augmented with a local SQlite database of hand-picked sites) so that I could escape Kagi, but I'm excited if Waterfox Search is an alternative I can recommend to others!

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2. MrAlex94 ◴[17 Nov 25 13:53 UTC] No.45953547[source]▶
Currently only Google, but Brave and Mojeek are going to be made available as well very soon