The Wasted Internet Potential, Part 2
A Few Bright Spots and Welcome to the new Davids versus Goliaths
After discussing how the internet went down the drain in my previous post, here are a few bright spots on that very internet.
News & Politics:
I subscribe to the Guardian, and donate to Daily Kos (admittedly somewhat irregularly, depending on my financial situation). The Dutch left-liberal version of the Guardian—de Volkskrant—has become a ‘two-sides’ publication to the point it has become unreadable1. The Guardian and especially Daily Kos have kept me sane throughout the Trump years (2016—2020), and still do.
Neither are perfect, and both have their items, yet both allow healthy discussions in their comment sections. And both have the occassional article that provides possible solutions to current problems. If any of you reading this know of other good news sources, please let me know.
Science & Technology:
I’m a Nautilus subscriber, while Quanta Magazine—founded by the Templeton Foundation—simply doesn’t provide that option, meaning it’s free. Both provide in-depth articles about the latest developments in science and mathematics.
I used to subscribe to New Scientist, receiving their print version every week for years on end. In the end, I both couldn’t keep up plus I was getting very tired by their ‘breathless-headline-reporting’, meaning that almost every issue had a lead article that promised some breakthrough that would shatter science as we know it, only to find that the actual article was much more diligent.
This attention-baiting2 eventually put me off the magazine, so I unsubscribed from the print version. Recently, I tried the online version (with a considerable discount) for a year, but found out that the magazine hadn’t changed a bit: breathless headlines promising revolution while the actual articles were quite middle-of-the-road. Enough is enough. Avoid like the plague.
Both Quanta Magazine and Nautilus are more down-to-earth, plus offer more in-depth articles (something New Scientist severely lacks). Quite a few of their articles have informed my SF writing, not only providing inspiration, but also improving it for the better. Both come highly recommended.
Furthermore, I’m reluctantly recommending the Verge. Some of its focus is too much on gaming for my liking, but that’s personal taste, while its attention span is more fleeting that the average TikTok user. Yet, they sometimes have good articles pointing out new developments.
Search engine:
Only the first 100 searches are free on Kagi, after that there’s a pay schedule (both monthly and annually). I took out the professional option for a year @ $108 ($9 a month), as my 100 free searches were used up after only 8 days.
In my experience, Kagi’ search results—especially when searching for scientific or technological data—are superior to those of Google and the others. They also have the (nowadays) obligatory chatbot called ‘FastGPT’, which seems to be on par with ChatGPT and Google’s Bard (of which more, below).
I hope everybody knows that Google is not free because it accumulates your data—even thought they promise that it’s done incognito3—and uses that to target advertisements more effectively. It can’t be said enough: if a service on the internet is free, then chances are that you are the product. The ongoing enshittification demonstrates where this leads to, as Google search results—that once were world-leading—have now become a twisted mirror of SEO battles and ad monetisation rather than actually being useful.
Unfortunately, the alternatives—until recently—were not as good. While Duckduckgo promises more privacy, its search results are not as good as Google’s. I also sometimes use Ecosia, an ideological search engine based in Germany, which plants trees depending on their income. But Ecosia’s search results are also not beter than Google’s (often worse).
Compared to the others, though, both Kagi and Ecosia are small4. As per January 13, 2024, Kagi has 19,081 members who performed some 380,000 searches in the past day (about 20 per member per day), while Ecosia has amassed a larger (relatively speaking) following, see below.
Approximate searches per day as per April 2023 (source: Statistica):
• Google: 8,5 billion (or about 92.63% of the global serch engine market in 2023);
• Bing: number (2.79%);
• Yahoo number (1.1%);
• Yandex (1.6%);
• Duckduckgo (0.52%);
• Baidu (0.44%);
• Ecosia 14.4 million (as per November 2021, which would translate into a 0.16% global market share);
• Kage: 380,000 (or 0.004%5);
Which leaves 0.92% for other search engines including Ecosia and Kagi. Nevertheless, for Google this immense advantage in user base does not translate in better search results (see: enshittification), but rather in increased advertising dollars (Google’s main source of income).
So even while Google has more than 22,000 times the amount of searches than Kagi6, (or almost 560 times the amount of those on Ecosia), I still find Kagi’s search result superior. Imagine how good they could be if its membership increases to that of Ecosia.
With regards to Ecosia, keep in mind that Ecosia basically uses Bing (including the ads). So while Ecosia claims to have planted more than 190 million trees since its inception, it also contributes to Bing’s bottom line7.
Chatbots:
As mentioned, FastGPT is Kagi’s chatbot, while Perplexity AI has its own website. Important difference between these two and ChatGPT (from OpenAI, which also powers Bing) and Google’s Bard8 is that they quote sources. Unfortunately, not all of these sources are the most reliable, like post from Quora (FastGPT) or Reddit (Perplexity AI). Yet I think this is a step in the right direction.
Next step is to train those ‘AI9’s to use reliable sources, or to cross-check a source as much as possible, or both. I think Wikipedia can play a major role in this, if they’re willing.
At first I was a bit weary of using chatbots—after the novelty wore off, as I did check ChatGPT and Google Bard—even very reluctantly as Google Bard keeps your data for at least 18 months. If I put the same queries to Perplexity AI, FastGPT, ChatGPT and Google Bard, then I get approximately the same answers. But with FastGPT and Perplexity AI at least I get some insight as to where they get their responses from10.
Right now, Perplexity AI has a free tier—I haven’t run into their limit of free queries yet—but do have a Pro version (which charges $20/month or $200/year). However, if you think ChatGPT will remain free to use, I give you this preview on OpenAI’s custom GPT store, where each custom version both has its free version, but for advanced functionality one has to pay. Shape of things to come: paid versions of the AI hype. Monetisation is on the way baby, because Google/Microsoft/Meta can’t be paying the training and maintenance bills forever, you know.
Also, interestingly, a commenter at The Verge portrays Perplexity AI as an existential threat to Google. To quote:
“Go look at Perplexity’s generative AI product11 and see how it cuts Google entirely out of the picture. Google’s business model of paid ad links in seearch results spammed by SEO link farms is suddenly antiquated…”
We’ll have to see how this develops, but I’m happy to see that the big internet giants are getting some healthy competition in this area.
Email & VPN:
There are a large amount of email providers—with the utmost of them being free—but only a few that maximise privacy. The email I use from my internet provider Ziggo gets about 10 spam messages per day—this is with spam filter enabled, meaning 10 get through, on average), and even my icloud account sees the odd spam email. After using it for a year, there has been no spam at all in my Proton Mail account. May it remain so!
On top of that, Proton—started by people involved with CERN—also provides cloud storage (Proton Drive), VPN and a calendar. There’s a free level, but I’ve decided to get a paid account—which cost me €190 for two years—that gives me over 540 GB of cloud storage and 15 email addresses (I ony use one), 10 high-speed VPN connections (which I use regularly), and 25 calendars (which are not user-friendly enough, so I’m staying with iCal for the moment).
Proton Mail was launched in May 2014, and has grown to about 100 million users (as per April 2023). This gives me confidence that it will be around for a long time to come.
TL;DR: if you want a high-quality internet service, be prepared to pay for it.
Daily Kos, Quanta Magazine, Ecosia and Perplexity AI are the only free services mentioned here, all the others require a subscription (even if some do have a free, albeit quite limited tier). Otherwise, I’m increasingly switching to paid accounts, for the following reasons:
• Absolutely no ads12 (except for the Guardian, for shame—I pay 75 pounds per year but still see ads. It seems that a Digital Edition subscription of 150 pounds per year is ad-free);
• Better experience;
• More privacy;
• The smaller players have the potential to disrupt the major players (and avoid and/or break monopolies);
Before the internet, services like newspapers, magazines, books (even at the Library you had to get a monthly subscription to borrow books), and postal mail were not free. Now, many people have been led to believe that many of these services are ‘free’ on the internet, not knowing or accepting that the price is that several companies will build up a very extensive profile of your internet habits13. So maybe many of us should consider paying for these services, once more, in order to ensure a much better experience.
On top of that, if micro-Davids like Kagi and Perplexity AI can not only compete with the powerful Bing14 and the almighty Google on its own turf, but even be considered an existential threat, then using or (whisper it) even supporting them can’t be that bad, right?
Author’s note: while I was a bit downbeat at the end of 2023, I do try to move into 2024 with a positive attitude. And to put my money where my mouth is. So support the cause you believe in, as they can be disruptive in a positive way.
Many thanks for reading while I keep working on a number of essays that stretch my mind. Stay tuned!
Hint: if one side is clearly and openly promoting fascist ideas, it should be called out for it. For shame, Volkskrant!
Indeed, click-baiting, but keep in mind the physical print magazine is what keeps them afloat;
While simulataneously gathering a very strong insight in your browsing habits, purchase history and many other things;
More like ‘minuscule’;
So Kagi will need some 250 x 19,000 = 4.75 million members to reach 1% of the global search market;
It’s not David against Goliath, but more like a beetle against an elephant;
Albeit by a relatively small amount;
Or whatever it will be called in the future;
I still have trouble calling them ‘intelligent’, although that also depends on your definition of intelligence;
Not all, but at least some;
According to the same commenter, “Perplexity has a headcount of 38 people, btw”;
I do use adblockers on other sites, but no adblocker is perfect;
And subsequently use them for ad placements and many other things;
Microsoft;