A conversational interface does not have room for a page of ads. Google results are an entire page of ads for most keywords with commercial intent now. In a chat interface on mobile there is nowhere for them to go.
My opinion that conversational interfaces like ChatGPT will replace a list of links is speculative but not particularly controversial at this point.
Something not mentioned here is advertising and ad tech. With traditional search advertising going away, psyads - psychologically manipulative advertising that changes answers and text generations to convince people to buy and do things - will become the new nightmare.
In the same way language models can mimic any character ("write a poem in the style of Jar Jar Binks") they can also mimic voice and tone in a way designed to appeal - and sell to - an individual based on their personal data and history.
ChatGPT and its clones require login and often credit card and phone number, they collect your data, and they feed everything you do back to language models for training. I'm only aware of one that has a privacy policy that would prevent this.
This from a competing search engine summarizer for that link.
```ChatGPT can be a useful tool for helping students to develop their writing skills and think more critically, but it should be used to complement and enhance traditional methods of instruction, not replace them. By recognizing the limits of ChatGPT and pushing themselves beyond those limits, students can learn to identify and address the weaknesses in their own writing, and they can learn to structure their arguments in a more logical and coherent way.```
This is a completely reasonable and insightful comment.Along with any comments critical of Kagi, it is downvoted to oblivion. I have to say the way Kagi shills overwhelm any discussion on HN is incredibly frustrating. They hijack every thread. They even post about HN being their main source of customers. They have hacked HN, no two ways about it.
For anyone who might feel I am being unreasonable or that this post was somehow wrong-headed, this is Wikipedia's description of The Turner Diaries.
"The Turner Diaries is a 1978 novel by William Luther Pierce, published under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald. It depicts a violent revolution in the United States which leads to the overthrow of the federal government, a nuclear war, and, ultimately, a race war which leads to the systematic extermination of non-whites. All groups opposed by the novel's protagonist, Earl Turner—including Jews, non-whites, "liberal actors", and politicians—are murdered en masse."
I am (obviously) copying and pasting the same urls that appear in the search results I shared individually into the url entry form on the Kagi summarizer page.
Also, being realistic, I do not believe that many normal people try to summarize the full text of old public domain ebooks. If you search for Moby Dick, much better resources come up, and that is what you want a summary for. People want a summary when they are searching to know if they should read more.
I find it does well with ebooks. I haven't tried with pdfs or videos. The quality of the AndiSearch summaries for the things I use every day like articles, Wikipedia and technical documentation is very good.
The Summarize button is on the search results, therefore you don't need to visit a separate site and paste in the url. Additionally, you already know when a summary is available as the button only shows when it is. It is new but already I feel that it changes how you use a search engine having this feature available right there on the results.
The Kagi one said 'No summary available at this moment, please try again later.' for many of the urls I tried.
Fwiw I use AndiSearch and they already have a great summarizer integrated directly into search results that they launched last week.
There is a Summarize button on every result card that can show a summary. The summaries are much faster. And they are clearly much higher quality.
Unlike Kagi, they don't spam every HN post that mentions search with shill comments. And unlike Kagi, it is free and anyone can use it. It does not require login, so you can use it anonymously. This looks like a rushed attempt to copy the AndiSearch summary feature.
I already find that the summaries on AndiSearch are so good that I can use it to filter which articles I need to read. The Reader mode is also very good.
If you like this, I'd recommend comparing it. You can paste in a url and get a summary and reader mode for it. I find searching for the title works better. I haven't seen it posted here yet.
I liked this. I don't like that they took it offline without even updating the home page. Frustrating. I was searching into the void.
A friend who is a Kagi user told me that they posted on Discord they have taken it offline. Meh. It has been down for days. It was Kagi's contribution to free and open search launched when Marginalia came out.
The home page still shows promotional spiel, but searches no longer work and it sounds like it isn't coming back.
Maybes Kagi only launched Teclis to try to kill the handful of tiny independent non-commercial search engines like Marginalia.nu and Wiby. I weep for free and open non-commercial search engines when big corporates can do this to them.
I am hoping for Marginalia.nu can thrive now. A commercial search engine running non-commercial search always seemed off.
Does anyone know that means Kagi is just repurposing Google and Bing results now?
I am sorry @dang I apologize for the aggressive tone of my comment and not making a better argument without the anger. The promotion felt blatant. I let it get to me (every comment I believe at the time - and many other recent posts). It was wrong and I'm sorry.
1. You don't know what privacy is. "We believe that Kagi has the most user-friendly privacy policy of any search engine out there. However, privacy and anonymity are not the same things. For example your parents can know everything about you and still fully respect your privacy." Ask any kid if privacy is their parents knowing everything. You're using it as a marketing term.
2. This is illegal public solicitation and an SEC violation: "anyone passionate about Kagi and our vision for the web will have the opportunity to invest as little as $5,000 USD and join the ride with us. It would be structured as a SAFE note and we would use the funds to expand the team and accelerate our product vision."
3. Stop abusing HN to shill your paid search engine. "We are pleased to see that Kagi is propagating fast through Hacker News, Reddit and Twitter with word of mouth from existing users." Kagi shills hijack every single Hn discussion thread about search. You is just as bad. Just. Stop.
I left a large tech company with the dream of building a startup. I failed and am back doing consulting work and figuring out my next step. After realizing I'd failed, I fell in a deep rut.
You can get out of it.
Small steps is what worked for me. Just one win every day, or a working piece of code, or an admin task I'd been putting off before. It rebuilds your confidence that you can achieve things, and each little thing lifts your mood.
Also, the obvious things baked into our culture work. Being outdoors, especially in the sunshine, added to a healthy amount of exercise every day, even just a walk, helped me significantly. A healthier diet and taking supplements especialy B group vitamins had a big effect for me.
Also I cut out weed and smoking. For me, it sapped my motivation not just when I was high, but for days afterwards.
Dude why do you have to fill these threads about all the spam on search with yet more spam promoting your crappy Bing-based search engine. Just let the conversation happen without all the self promotion ok? Jeez Louise this is annoying!
You might be missing the point. Try a difficult question instead of a regular web search. Something like this. "Why did Twitter add Elon Musk to its board of directors, and what impact did that have on twitter's share price?"
Then click on "View in Reader" on the results. This is not like Google dude.
People on the Discord are trying crazy questions like that and reporting what it does good or bad on. It screws some up but it is cool. It finds stuff Google doesn't.
Google is anything but a simple box that gives you answers now. It hasn't been that for a very long time. I wish it was.
It is a box that gives you a screenfull of ads, some spam copycat sites I wish I could remove, and a lot of clutter. As many people on here have said before, it only gets away with it because it owns the web browser through Chrome, Android and its Apple deal for Safari.
Did you try Andi search? It returns full search results alongside the answer and has full preview content for many of the websites, and the content is from the websites not Google or Bing's snippets. It's completely different to the way you described it.
My biggest problem with it is that the alpha version still has errors and is weak for searches like local businesses. Also, big problem is I'm in Australia and everything is in imperial units. Having said that, however, I've been using it since it became available a few weeks ago and it has already improved a surprising amount. And the question answering if you ask specific-enough questions can blow your mind.
My opinion that conversational interfaces like ChatGPT will replace a list of links is speculative but not particularly controversial at this point.