Pseudo-monopolies are great at extinguishing imagination like that, and tbh Google search (as I understand its basic setup) was only as good as it was thanks to timing and few really good competitors.

  • UnlimitedRumination [he/him]@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    I’ll tack on to what the other commenter said:

    • Cost: I considered myself a heavy searcher (software engineer and gamer) and have been surprised to see I have rarely exceeded even half of my allotted searches ($5/mo, 300 searches). I’m now reprogramming my brain to stop turning to alternatives when something should be easy to find because “I might use up all my queries”.
    • Better: apart from all of the cool features, and there are many, there’s also that it just “feels better”. I don’t know how to qualify that despite being a professional in that world. It’s kinda the opposite feeling that I had using Google over the last 5+ years where I wondered if I was getting dumber or if the internet (and Google) was absolutely full of garbage.

    It’s on the very short list of subscriptions I pay for right now despite having a very limited budget at the moment.

    • Elliott@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 year ago

      I think based on your response I’m going to jump in. What other subscriptions you think are worth it?

      • UnlimitedRumination [he/him]@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Sorry, I forgot to check for replies til now. I’m using almost the exact set of services the other commenter is, minus mullvad (proton is fine for me), backblaze (I have a homelab with a lot of redundant storage capacity and have enough important stuff backed up to the cloud in other ways I’m fine with having to rebuild the rest if something big happens), and standard notes (but I have been considering switching to it just this week, just haven’t done the research).

      • sloppy_diffuser@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Not the OP but currently have:

        • Kagi - Search…
        • Proton - Email, Calendar, VPN, Pass (I just use for aliases). Now that I’ve upped my privacy knowledge I need to reevaluate. I do like their products though from a useability perspective. VPN supporting port forwarding is a bonus.
        • Backblaze B2 - off site backups using rclone and Round Sync (android rclone) to sync files
        • Mullvad VPN - Just got based on the XMR payment option and RAM only servers. Still deciding where I have a VPN included with Proton. I don’t like putting my eggs all in one basket though as I did with Google so its attractive to keep.
        • Bitwarden - Password manager. May switch to self hosted in the future.
        • Standard Notes - May switch to self hosted if I don’t lose any features I use.