Search tool that only returns content created before ChatGPT's public release
tegabrain.com873 points by dmitrygr 2 days ago
873 points by dmitrygr 2 days ago
> This is a search tool that will only return content created before ChatGPT's first public release on November 30, 2022.
The problem is that Google's search engine - but, oddly enough, ALL search engines - got worse before that already. I noticed that search engines got worse several years before 2022. So, AI further decreased the quality, but the quality had a downwards trend already, as it was. There are some attempts to analyse this on youtube (also owned by Google - Google ruins our digital world); some explanations made sense to me, but even then I am not 100% certain why Google decided to ruin google search.
One key observation I made was that the youtube search, was copied onto Google's regular search, which makes no sense for google search. If I casually search for a video on youtube, I may be semi-interested in unrelated videos. But if I search on Google search for specific terms, I am not interested in crap such as "others also searched for xyz" - that is just ruining the UI with irrelevant information. This is not the only example, Google made the search results worse here and tries to confuse the user in clicking on things. Plus placement of ads. The quality really worsened.
Are you aware of Kagi (kagi.com)?
With them, at least the AI stuff can be turned off.
Membership is presently about 61k, and seems to be growing about 2k per month: https://kagi.com/stats
I directly use Yandex sometimes, because there are huge blind spots for all the US-based engines I'm aware of, and it fills some of them in.
If someone can point me to a better index for that purpose, I'd love to avoid Yandex. Please inform me.
There are few other powerful countries, with countless Web services, who freely wages war(s) on other countries and support wars in many different ways. Is there a way to avoid their products?
As a European, I'm also increasingly in favour of avoiding American companies. Especially the big corrupting near-monopolists.
It's worth pointing out the flaws of all bad actors. The more info we have, the more effectively we can act.
Whataboutism doesn't get us anywhere — saying "but what about X" (insert anything for X here) usually results in doing nothing.
Some of us would rather take a stand, imperfect as it is, than just sit and do nothing. Especially in the very clear case of someone (Kagi) doing business with a country that invaded a neighboring country for no reason, and keeps killing people there.
Why this particular stand? Is doing nothing any better than taking what are essentially random stands? Obviously if you are Ukrainian this will be an important stand to you, but otherwise doing things based on a mix of what the media you like focuses on or whatever is not really very different from doing nothing.
I think "no wars of conquest" is a bright line that was crossed by Russia, that hasn't been crossed by other nations in a long time. And I think it's important for the whole world to take a stand on that, not just the nation that was invaded. It's not a "random stand."
[flagged]
I find it much easier to take a strong stand on Russia/Ukraine than on Israel/Palestine. The history of Israel/Palestine is much more of a gray area. Palestine has used plenty of aggressive actions and rhetoric that make Israel's actions more understandable (if not justified).
Example of actions: Gaza invaded Israel and killed, raped, and kidnapped civilians on October 7. Ukraine had no such triggering event that caused Russia to invade.
Example of rhetoric: Gaza's political leaders have said they want to destroy Israel. I don't think anyone in power in Ukraine has said they want to destroy the Russian state.
Plenty of people boycott Israeli goods and there's an increasing trend of moving away from reliance on American services also.
"enthusiastic support"
https://yougov.co.uk/international/articles/52279-net-favour...
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/10/03/how-american...
etc etc....
I'm not sure what collective West you're referring to; but apparently it excludes every major Western European nation, America, and Canada.
I am amused by my (unpopular and downvoted by now) comment by the scourge of "whataboutism" sparked a discussion, where comments begin with "how about" :-)
That is exactly my point! Saying "but what about" is akin to saying "you shouldn't do anything, because there is another unrelated $thing happening elsewhere". I refuse to follow this line of thinking.
Doing something is literally the opposite of doing nothing. This is complete gibberish.
It's "doing nothing" because it's rationalizing keeping the status quo. Avoiding Kagi is doing nothing; using Kagi is doing something.
> Why this particular stand?
First, any stand is better than whataboutism and just sitting there doing nothing.
Second, this stand results from my thoughts. It is my stand. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Third, in the history of the modern world there were very few black&white situations where there was one side which was clearly the aggressor. This is one of them.
> First, any stand is better than whataboutism and just sitting there doing nothing.
I definitely disagree with this. There are many cases where you might take the wrong stand, especially where you do not have detailed knowledge of the issue you re taking a stand over.
It's still better to take a stand even when there is a risk of being wrong because there is always a risk of being wrong. Don't let fear of being wrong or not knowing everything (which is impossible) stop you from standing up for your beliefs. Instead, stand up for what you believe, but be open to having your mind changed. If new information comes to light which changes your position that's perfectly acceptable.
It's a lot easier to live with yourself when you act according to your best understanding of the situation than when you allow fear to paralyze you into inaction at a time when you should have done something.
> wrong stand
But that's the whole point, isn't it? What is "wrong"? You decide.
You see people in a peaceful country getting invaded and being bombed, shot, raped and tortured? You decide if this is "wrong". I'm just saying that you should decide, rather than say "but what about something else".
I was very conscious of this comment being called out as a 'whatabout', it was still only thing I could think of and wrote it bit carefully.
My point was that we should either not take an issue with things like this and block everything in the whole country because their government is bad. Or we should do the same for other countries too.
Google is worse than Yandex, no? At this time, Russia is (debatably*) more evil than the USA, but that doesn't mean Yandex is more evil than Google. And I'm told Yandex has better search results.
* most of the evil stuff Russia's done, the USA's done way more of
Not only is "whataboutism" literally anti-communist jargon, you're using it wrong. It was meant to refer to when the US would criticize some aspect of the USSR and the USSR would point to the fact that the US was an apartheid state. The point was that the accusation that the US was making was entirely different from the observation that the USSR was making - it was simply a change of subject.
You can't call for a boycott on a cosmetics company that experiments on dogs if you are a rival cosmetics company that experiments on ten times as many dogs.
I find this amusing, because it seems like Kagi's target audience dislikes this (politically polarized), and I as someone who is not Kagi's target audience likes this (politically neutral).
Politics is not just a 1 dimensional line.
Yeah, it's two dimensional. One axis goes from good to evil. The other axis, chaotic to lawful.
There's a secret third dimension you can ascend to through a hole in the neutral middle where the forces of the other two axes cancel out. 'The Elites' doesn't want you to know this.
/hj?
Wait, what? Their choice is specifically a politically neutral one, wouldn't that mean their target audience is a politically neutral one? Why is your impression that Kagi's target audience is politically polarized users? Been a paying user of Kagi for years, never got that impression.
FWIW, I don't think Kagi should remove or avoid indexing content from countries that invade others, because a lot of the times websites in those countries have useful information on them. If Kagi were to enact such a block, it would mean it would no longer surface results from HN, reddit and a bunch of other communities, effectively making the search engine a lot less useful.
Why is supporting Yandex, who are involved in Russian politics and linked to the ruling regime, a neutral decision? That is very much a political decision, in the same way that working with US tech companies is a political decision. You need to decide what you're willing to tolerate and where your ethical lines are drawn; the alternative isn't neutrality, it's nihilism.
Because when Ferret7446 says "neutral", they mean "anything that doesn't harm them". Centrism is a lie.
Same reason supporting Google, Microsoft, YCombinator is a neutral decision.
Kagi uses both Yandex and Google btw.
I don't like defending Russia which is a horrible country, but I find it hypocritical to only talk about their imperialism and pretend not to see that the most imperialist country in the world, the one that has started, financed, and participated in the most wars, is the United States, and yet the question of boycotting American companies is never brought up. Google has been intentionally sabotaged in terms of image search and reverse image search; Yandex is literally the best on the market, but Kagi should boycott them because their headquarters are in the wrong country?
Yandex has the best image search, and others are years behind it. Further more Nebius has sold all group’s businesses in Russia and certain international market. They are completely divested from Russia for a 1.5 years already: https://nebius.com/newsroom/ynv-announces-successful-complet...
The post you linked was posted when the divestment was already going underway, so it is at least dishonest if not malicious.
Yandex is the government approved search engine in Russia, which is impossible without the state exerting control over it. I wouldn't pay much attention to divestment, it's not how any of that works.
For instance here you can learn that Yandex NV is fully controlled by a group of Russian investors: https://www.rbc.ru/business/06/03/2024/65e7a0f29a7947609ea39...
Some clarification. Since 2024 Yandex NV split into Nebius (NL-registred NASDAQ-listed company, no longer a search engine) and russian-based Yandex. The latter is fully controlled by russian investors.
The government's where the offices of a software company are physically located exert control over them. To follow this logic to its end and apply it even handedly results in nation based NIH syndrome surely?
You are talking about an entity whose ownership is 99.8% Russian nationals and state companies; whose employees for the most part are Russian nationals, whose main market is Russia and with very little tangible assets that can be arrested in the Netherlands. The only reason for this "divestment" is sanctions evasion.
you clearly don't know anything about nebius
They have a lot of hardware in e.g. Finland. I don't think they provide GPU access to the russian companies, feel free to correct me