I'm glad I got rid of my Teslas, they are always doing their best to make the experience worse. Stage three of enshittification from them. I loved it back when it was stage 1.
The speed is what I like, and the simplicity when I bought it. I hate 10,000 trim options with random prices like BMW and having to argue with a sales guy - just gimme the price!
A classic case of climbing the wall, and pulling the ladder up afterward. Others try to build their own ladder, and Google uses their deep pockets and political influence to knock the ladder over before it reaches the top.
Why does Google even need to know about your ladder? Build the bot, scale it up, save all the data, then release. You can now remove the ladder and obey robots.txt just like G. Just like G, once you have the data, you have the data.
Why would you tell G that you are doing something? Why tell a competitor your plans at all? Just launch your product when the product is ready. I know that's anathema to SV startup logic, but in this case it's good business
Running the bot nowadays is hard, because a lot of sites will now block you - not just by asking nicely via robots.txt, but by checking your actual source IP. Once they see it's not Google, they send you a 403.
> Microsoft spent roughly $100 billion over 20 years on Bing and still holds single-digit share. If Microsoft cannot close the gap, no startup can do it alone.
This is incorrect. Kagi does not use the Bing index, as detailed in the article:
> Bing: Their terms didn’t work for us from the start. Microsoft’s terms prohibited reordering results or merging them with other sources - restrictions incompatible with Kagi’s approach. In February 2023, they announced price increases of up to 10x on some API tiers. Then in May 2025, they retired the Bing Search APIs entirely, effective August 2025, directing customers toward AI-focused alternatives like Azure AI Agents.
There's one great example of a company that did that and managed to go viral on their release, Cuil. They claimed to have a Google size of search index. Unfortunately for them their search results weren't good and so that visibility quickly disappeared.
Going further back, AlltheWeb was actually pretty decent but was eventually bought by Overture and then Yahoo and ended up in their graveyard.
For everyone else it's the longer grind trying to gain visibility.
> I've since moved to the apple ecosystem... Set and forget.
Careful, you'll get blasted for that in these parts. Until about 7 years ago, I had been an Android absolutist. Custom ROMs, launchers, you name it. I sneered at those Apple-loving simpletons. Then, after missing several important phone calls in a day due to the phone 'app' not working properly, I got fed up and got a Nexus 6, the official Google phone and the reference implementation for Android. The phone was big and ugly, but at least I was still using a "real" operating system.
Then, as I went through the app store looking for some needed apps, I realized that I couldn't find what I wanted. What I downloaded and installed turned out to be scams and hijacked the phone as ad-riddled malware. It slowly dawned on me: The Play Store is anarchistic, lawless hellscape.
I was too old for this shit. I went and got an iPhone and never looked back. I turn it on, it does things. I don't have to worry about it. Yes, the software quality isn't near perfect, and they seem to be gradually enshittifying their app store. But at least they make a token effort to keep things in a somewhat curated state.
It's night and day, far as I'm concerned. I've gotten to the point where I just want my things to work. I don't want to spend hours tweaking and troubleshooting. I realize I'm in a cult compound, but it's better than the Mad Max world outside.
There's nothing wrong with iOS and iPhones. If that's what works best for you, then that's what you should use. With this said...
Most people use their Android phone like iPhone owners do. They use the default launcher, default settings, and things work. Like you, they turn it on and it does things. They'll install their apps for work, social media, etc, just like iOS users. Maybe they'll install a different browser so sync works or have adblocking, but that's it.
Unlocking bootloaders, custom ROMs, perhaps rooting, getting to the point where apps are hijacking your phone (wth?)... I'm not sure if you understand this, but that's very extreme. If you get blasted, it's because that's the equivalent to jailbreaking an iPhone, replacing the OS, and so on. Of course things are going to break.
iOS lets you do a lot of UI customization these days. Home screen(s), widgets, icons, lock screen, etc, some of which I can't do on my Android phone and may have to use a 3rd party launcher! Why don't you spend hours tweaking that stuff, like many do? Why doesn't it bother you that you can do it? Just a guess, but I think you've changed. You no longer care about this stuff and maybe you also don't have the same free time? That's fine, but also shows that the problem wasn't Android or iOS, but the old you that didn't always know when to stop.
On a side note, things have changed a lot in the past few years. These days you don't install a custom ROM if you want features... you get a phone from a brand like Samsung because their UI is packed with features that custom ROMs don't have. You also don't need them for updates when a new phone gives you 5-7 years of support. Most posts I see here about custom ROMs are about privacy and security, removing Google from their phones, stepping away from the cloud and subscriptions, etc. Don't assume that that the wild side of Android is still the same because it isn't, at least not to the extent. You may also want to drop the idea that using Android requires doing all you've mentioned, because almost no one does that. You were the 1% of the 1%.
I care about privacy more than most people, so custom ROMs and the like were the "best" way to achieve that. I understand that most people don't do that. They just use the phone they got with their wireless plan to install gmail and whatsapp and facebook or whatever. The time I bailed on Android was when I also realized that Google was no longer the "don't be evil" company (yes yes, I know it never was, but they went mask-off). So, I've cut Google and Meta products out of my life and put all my privacy eggs in one basket, trying to reduce the attack surface with the one company who performatively claims to care about that. You're right, I changed and got old and don't have the time nor willpower to battle my phone anymore. I'm sure Android is just fine to use now, but I want no part of Google.
*edit* and everything I see about their Play Store is that it's still a lawless hellscape.
At one point, there were multiple new entries throughout each day. It was entertaining/terrifying to reload the page. Wonder when we'll see something like fuckedaicompany.com pop up.
I use llms to handle the minutia that I don't want to do. The part I enjoy is figuring out the problem. Once I know how it should be done, I like to task the llm to do the rote parts. "It's in my head, I just need to get it on paper." So doing a shorter prompt in English and providing exact instructions gets me 75% of the way there, at which point I can audit and tweak as necessary. It has me doing hobby side projects more often. Once it gets prohibitively expensive, I'll go back to the Old Fashioned Way (tm) and pine for the days of subsidized code completion.
I absolutely agree that gamified, algorithm-driven social media should be banned for those under 16. My issue is how that should be done. I sure as shit don't want to have to present my ID to look at dank memes.
> But the right answer is still to ban advertising.
Banning platform owned advertising on social networks is already impossible. If you have any concept that is broader than that, rest assured trying it will create a dystopia that still has advertising.
I assumed they meant banning most unsolicited advertising completely, even outside of social media. Advertizing is a scourge upon humanity. We know propaganda works and is generally bad, so why should propaganda be allowed to be used for money making purposes? Especially when money itself can and is used to influence politics even more directly?
I don't think it should be banned, but I'm all for encouraging alternatives that use simple reverse-chronological and don't have the same tendency to create FOMO, a desire to check repeatedly, etc.
>I absolutely agree that gamified, algorithm-driven social media should be banned for those under 16.
I agree. It's purposely addictive and harmful to peoples' mental health.
The current situation is akin to having absolutely no regulations on cigarettes.
Personally, I'd take it a step further and ban targeting algorithms for all ages and pair that with strict data privacy laws that make the entire user data industry collapse.
Its not only gamified and algorithm driven. People are also monetarily incentivized for socially harmful behaviors. Irrespective of political affiliation. Political content is highly engaging and also highly toxic.
I had the privilege of visiting the building and going to the top of the test stand a few years back. They were huge and amazing structures, clearly done in 1950's style. Lead paint, exposed elevators, grates where you could see all the way to the ground, etc. It was terrifying and incredibly interesting at the same time. I have relatives in Huntsville who heard them being demolished.
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