Intersection of web search

Something peculiar happened, the biggest search monopolist Google decided to show ai summaries instead of search results. For years the search engine acted as a platform for advertisers and seekers. Now, the act is over and the emperor stands without clothes.

The open web where people share knowledge, data and code is very dear to me. I came in touch with the internet when search engines where already a thing. Before, I guess, there were some kind of phone books with addresses instead of numbers. Search engines made the web discover-able and popular beyond imagination. I did not imagine asking a chatbot pretending to be human.

In my experience the promises of ai fall short. I really hope that the pivot to ai fires back. But, what can be done right now? Are there any alternatives to using Google “search”. I don’t think there are any viable alternatives. Kagi is run by tech bros, Ecosia is a lie, DDG, Startpage are just Bing frontends and SearXNG or Marginalia might hold the future, but are too niche for now.

The best thing you can do right now is using https://noai.duckduckgo.com/ as your default search. In Firefox add https://noai.duckduckgo.com?q=%s as a search shortcut and set it as default search.