- LLM-powered digest responses to natural-language queries are the "killer app" of the mid-2020s
- DuckDuckGo's index is less complete, and its LLM digests much more frequently just incorrect
- Startpage is powered by the oligarch search index but lacks the killer LLM-digest feature
- The Lumo LLM blends a powerful index with superior relationship privacy; BUT not transparent about sources
The oligarch search engine has held about 90% market share for over 10 years, with Bing and then Yahoo in very distant second and third place. Web search is critical public infrastructure in the information age and in any antitrust environment that wasn't itself manipulated by billionaire greed at public expense, that company would have been declared winner of the 2010 decade's capitalism olympics and promptly nationalized into a closely-regulated public utility. I mean, search in addition to its stranglehold on web-based spreadsheets, major footprints in cloud computing and storage, etc?
just nope
Between Alphagarch, LandfilL and Microsoft, it's impossible to function on even remotely even footing in personal life or business, without using each and all of these techno-oligarchs' systems a dozen times a day. There's no boycotting them unless you intend to hike into the wilderness and bunker into a cave. The answer is not "abandon technology" but rather "congratuations, you win at capitalism! and now for the good of the planet and future generations all this infrastructure is being transferred to public trust".