I am here once again to complain about the enshitification of Google search. Maybe AI will kill us, maybe it’ll save us but meantime, it has taken one of mankind’s greatest accomplishments of last 40 years and ruined it.
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duckduckgo gets rid of most of google's flaws, especially the many ads that you just never have to see at all. think it's been at least 10 years since I ditched Google search. haven't missed it, at all. cos yer right, search is a great concept, when it isn't shackled to ad revenues.
Have read Ed Zitron’s latest rant about it? He read a lot of the emails disclosed in the lawsuits. Amazingly, they have the reins of search to a genius who skippered Yahoo in its last years of its enshittification. CEOs who know how to predict CEO behavior saw this coming from Sundar…
Love good writing. Excellent article. Thanks for sharing it. Ed is nice to look at too. 😻
My next question... Is Google purposely skewing map results to force people to drive by their advertisers? I'm serious. Directions are nonsensical sometimes. And they bought Waze..☹️
Agreed, but it was always going to be about money, Clara. Always. It saddens me to think about all the small businesses knocking themselves out to rank on Google. Lol!
I think that ironically the way back may be a return to old school Yahoo and human-vetted website directories - it’ll be tedious, but even if you just get to say 10,000 websites and prioritize results from those, you’ll have a pretty useful product.
The only thing I still appreciate about Google is Google lens. You can find any product for less by right clicking and searching the internet with lens.
Try it….. they haven’t figured out how to monetize it and screw it up. Yet.
At work, when looking up relatively obscure subjects, like “research papers about ROV anodes”, up to about 2 years ago Google would find me university advancements or manufacturer’s white papers.
Yes. While the AI results are an additional level of awful, Google had already pushed the first remotely useful results well down the page before they started adding AI.
“Google it” used to mean a magical power to comb through the world’s databases and sites in an instant. Now it means plunging into a sty of sponsored crap and nonsensical AI results.
Hardly ever used it but now it's ridiculous. Can't believe how bad it is trying to ask simple questions. Gonna switch and see if other search engines are as bad.
The first company that gets vc to fund getting together a group of educators and experts to curate the internet, in a modern form of Diderot's Encyclopedia, will inherit the keys to the kingdom.
And AI at the top now??? With mistakes and misinformation presented as facts! Most people won’t recognize the difference and neither
will AI. What is Truth?
Sad really. I fondly remember first discovering Google back when it was still just a fairly obscure experimental search engine (hosted at Stanford University, I believe) still competing with the likes of Altavista, Lycos, and Ask Jeeves.
I found this trick, which makes Chrome address bar searches spit out the "Web" tab in Google, to at least strip out the AI and sponsored junk (for the most part?) https://tenbluelinks.org/#chrome-windows
Finally, at the top of search settings you can set the default search engine to “Google web only” if you want. Otherwise you can use the gw alias in the search bar
Too bad the other major search engines, Bing and DuckDuckGo have gone down the same icky rabbit hole. I used to love the deep dig that google did. Now it’s just a big money grab.
Let's not blame AI for the decisions of the people running google. Search has the same leadership yahoo did and theyre doing the same thing. It's standard protocol to, after a neigh monopoly is established, you extract all the benefit you can for yourself and say fuck the users.
I loved using google to find information. I could find anything on any topic. Now I can't find the simplest things.Google search just sucks now. And I don't know what alternative there is yet. But I'll be damned, as soon as an alternative comes up, I am switching
I don’t work for these guys, but give Kagi a look. Simple, not enshittified but it’s not free. 60% results from Google’s index and the rest from their “small web” index (I.e., sites not focused on commerce or ad revenue)
I do the $5/mo plan. No regrets. Rarely switch to Google any more.
Google’s AI search could be drastically improved by training on .gov .edu .org websites, which they’ll never do, so it’ll continue to be on all of us to avoid it or verify it.
Yes. It was miraculously helpful and now it is useless unless you are researching buying something — and even for that its terrible compared to its origins.
So many free open-source search engine aggregators available, really losing nothing when leaving google search at all. Just move on from these horrible big tech companies
Thank you for the info! One of my relatives thinks that AI information is accurate and can be taken as gospel. I worry that our ability to think as individuals and process and parse information is disappearing very quickly.
Trump was an illegal candidate & the US Constitution does not allow him to take office again. Why isn't more being done to prevent his unlawful return to power? The SCOTUS determined states couldn't refuse to put him on their ballots, not that he hadn't violated his oath of office via insurrection.
Related journalism question - has Google actually been asked to respond to any reporting on this? Everyone seems to know search is broken, but I don't even think I've seen Google excuse making on the record, let alone explanations
Why would they? However, they do ask developers for feedback and implement changes based on the suggestions. They still have a long way to go in providing an excellent user experience.
Clicking the "Web" tab helps a great deal, but still not perfect.
I've been experimenting with Kagi. It's similar to the original Google, but they charge a monthly/annual fee instead of selling your data/advertising like Google does.. I definitely prefer the privacy.
I abandoned Google for DDG a good while back, and now it's so bad I’m on the hunt again (currently trying out https://search.brave.com to see how it stacks up).
I think we consumers will probably end up with one search engine for shopping / stuff and one for data / info.
like, they won't let me put a timerymy space heater with Google Home for ✌️ safety reasons ✌️, but they're totally fine making up medical information on the spot
AI summaries are so frustrating. Bluesky user @ernie.tedium.co made a page that points to the non-AI version of Google, which might be helpful to you. https://udm14.com
I learned the other day that you can block that junk from your search results if you add "-ai" at the end of your query. Probably doesn't fully address your concerns, but it does help preserve my sanity.
Christ when it started to default to shopping results I started yelling. When I had to keep scrolling past sponsored links and recursive AI results I yelled some more.
That's not AI as much as it's just marketing bullshit.
It seems as if every search word these days is tied to a product, song, movie, "personality" or some other such nonsense.
I've learned to just go down and click on page 3 or 4 to get past all that crap and find what I'm looking for.
Comments
https://tenbluelinks.org/
s/AI/Elon Musk
And thank you everyone for posting your fixes!
This is the kind of Good Shit I desperately missed from all the other ruined places.
My next question... Is Google purposely skewing map results to force people to drive by their advertisers? I'm serious. Directions are nonsensical sometimes. And they bought Waze..☹️
heres a great podcast if you want to know a specific person to point your energy to ! best but most infuriating topics are discussed by @edzitron.com
Try it….. they haven’t figured out how to monetize it and screw it up. Yet.
because it does not do what I need it to do
Now it’s useless, Bing does better (shock).
What is the most efficient way to write?
Tech Bros love to invent shittier versions of things that already exist and work perfectly fine.
Add to your search 👇
-site:Amazon.com
#shopLocal if possible
will AI. What is Truth?
Go to about:config in your address bar and search for browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh and set that property to true.
Now go to Settings and click the Search section. Down a bit will be the search shortcuts and there should be an add button
Finally, at the top of search settings you can set the default search engine to “Google web only” if you want. Otherwise you can use the gw alias in the search bar
https://udm14.com/
I can't find things I know existed
https://tenbluelinks.org
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/bye-bye-google-ai-turn-of/imllolhfajlbkpheaapjocclpppchggc?hl=en-US&pli=1
I do the $5/mo plan. No regrets. Rarely switch to Google any more.
“The Man Who Killed Google Search”
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/five-reasons-you-should-use-duckduckgo-instead-of-google/
https://searx.space/
https://www.earth.com/news/the-environmental-cost-of-ai-what-are-we-willing-to-give-up-for-computing-power/
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/google-chrome/bye-bye-ai-how-to-block-googles-annoying-ai-overviews-and-just-get-search-results
I've been experimenting with Kagi. It's similar to the original Google, but they charge a monthly/annual fee instead of selling your data/advertising like Google does.. I definitely prefer the privacy.
https://kagi.com
(removes the ai crap at the top, but it won't disenshittify the results)
I think we consumers will probably end up with one search engine for shopping / stuff and one for data / info.
Reddit is still a good resource.
I set my default search strings to this back when I still used google and it worked pretty well
https://venturebeat.com/ai/how-to-use-google-search-without-ai-the-udm14-work-around/
I have become a meme: old man yelling at clouds.
Coincidence? I don't think so.
It seems as if every search word these days is tied to a product, song, movie, "personality" or some other such nonsense.
I've learned to just go down and click on page 3 or 4 to get past all that crap and find what I'm looking for.