In terms of result quality? In my opinion, based on my particular search habits:

Kagi > SearXNG > Brave > Startpage/Google > DDG/Ecosia/Bing

Everyone is going to have their own opinions on each of those companies, but from a results lens, that’s what I find to be most/least effective.

Like all Google products, they will still make a halfhearted attempt to make it as useful as they can before absolutely destroying it with ads

Guessing Edge by default sent you to Bing, no surprise the DDG results look similar, given that they use Bing under he hood. They shuffle rankings slightly, but it’s the same index.

You can also use Ecosia, if your prefer a different shade of lipstick on your pig search results.

There’s not really a strong player in the open source search space.

Mwmbl exists, but per their own readme:

The quality is a long way’s off from matching the commercial engines at the moment

Kagi provides the source code for many of their services, but is not truly open source, especially because at its core, it relies on applying its own rankings to other’s indexes.

That said, search is a space where the old adage rings true:

If you’re not paying for it; you are the product!

For what it’s worth, I find value in my Kagi subscription.

Wanna bet my salary doesn’t go up 6.2% when they do that?

That’s probably $5/yr, most domains are renewed annually, and the more mundane TLDs, like .com are $12-15/yr (hence $1/mo)

Personally, my wife and I each have a version of firstname@fundomain.vanitytld, as well as a shared house@fundomain.vanitytld where all of our bills and shared expenses go to.

For some modicum of privacy, we also have a forwarding domain connected to SimpleLogin that allows us to do website.catchall@forwardingdomain.com for each website where we have little trust in the owner respecting our privacy.

Assuming you aren’t spending $$$ on a premium domain, I feel like $1/month on a domain is a pretty small price to pay for the freedom to move email providers as needed.

gestures vaguely in a direction

Ehh, people, you know?

harmlessdomain.com is available - I expect to see it registered by tomorrow or I’m never trusting a stranger on the internet ever again!

You’re hired!

The roles I’ve hired for require formal presentation of work/studies with a certain level of attention to detail, and more internal politics than I care to admit.

So while its never the sole deciding factor in a resume I do put weight on spelling, formatting, and general professionalism. If your email is firekitten22@aol.com, or jon@sirfapsalot.net I’m not immediately binning it, but you are starting from a disadvantage. stephanie@harmlessdomain.com is always gonna be just fine though.

To add, not deleted stuff is what my favorite lawyers call “discoverable”. Not sure how many lawyers Meta has but I’m betting at least one of them is reminding them deleting stuff is a good thing.

1. People don’t like the idea of paying for stuff they’re used to getting for free

2. Privacy Guides does not include Kagi in their recommendations because an account is required in order to search, despite it being against their privacy policy to log, and despite the fact that they allow “no-log” VPNs, messaging apps, etc. which all require accounts. They’re starting to soften to Kagi with their new Privacy Pass feature, however they seem hung up on the fact you need an account to generate private tokens. Accounts can be made with burner emails and paid with crypto.

3. Kagi leadership has had some controversial opinions on search censorship (they’re fairly blanket opposed to it) and other social issue in the past

4. In addition to search, Kagi offers AI tools, which is a turn-off for a lot of people

To me, none of these things are deal breakers, but some folks are eager for an excuse to complain.

And, 12h later, I checked back and the polar bear result is gone. Either it was a glitch in the matrix or the Kagi team has eyes everywhere.

I mean sure, if you ignore the first 20 or so relevant links before that, you’re right, that one does show up when searching for monkey (proof)

You can add literally any other word to the search and that one result disappears. Even bear monkey. Regardless of the fact that no one searches for just the word monkey, I find Kagi’s rankings consistently prioritize more quality and informative content.

Comparing to other search engines, Google is obsessed with the movie The Monkey, Bing really wants you to watch Monkey Baby Bon Bon live what looks like a nightmare life, Brave gives an OK mix of content, still with a The Monkey focus, and Kagi gives you a really solid mix of results across the monkey spectrum for such a vague query (plus one whole link to an article about polar bears).

If the polar bear result specifically bothers you, you can report it to Kagi and I’m sure they’ll fix it. I’m still happy with my choice though.

Edit: decided to check DDG as well - I’d written it off in my head as just Bing, but the results were slightly different - the Monkey Bon Bon nightmare fuel was pretty significantly demoted, and for better or worse, DDG was blissfully unaware of the movie The Monkey. Not a bad result overall.

I know it’s a controversial take around these parts, but I’ve fallen in love with Kagi.

If I had to rank search engines by results, in my opinion/experience:

Kagi > Brave > Startpage/Google > DDG/Ecosia/Bing

Kagi/Brave/Startpage/DDG all offer privacy to some degree. I haven’t really fucked with SearXNG though I’m sure its awesome.

Yay for team blank screen… I think?

Libby is able to sync with your kindle, and then you just choose “send to Kindle” on your phone when checking a book out and the book will appear in your Kindle library.

https://help.libbyapp.com/en-us/6017.htm

If you have a Kindle, this is 100% the best way to read books.