• haverholm@kbin.earth
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    116
    arrow-down
    19
    ·
    5 days ago

    I’m more surprised that people still use Google search at all after the years of enshittification — first the SEO crap, then “personalized search” bubbles, and finally the “AI” idiocy. Even shouting questions down a wishing well seems more productive at this point.

    • leisesprecher@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      112
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      5 days ago

      Not to sound confrontational, but you’re way too focused on your - likely rather advanced - usage.

      90% of people search for very simple stuff. They want to know the weather or want to know about that new movie they don’t quite remember the name of. And for that use case, Google is perfectly serviceable. And since people are used to it, for example by it being the default on most platforms, they use it.

      A lot of market leaders are objectively a bad choice, but they’re a known brand. Coca cola, McDonald’s, Oracle, etc.

      • haverholm@kbin.earth
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        29
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        5 days ago

        I don’t think you sound confrontational, but neither do I consider my internet searching particularly advanced. A lot of my searches are exactly what you describe, and a lot is trying to find a good research rabbit hole to go down. Call me curious.

        I’m just sceptical, primarily of Google Search’s inroads into surveillance monetisation and effective monopoly. For the same reasons I am as critical of the other “market leaders” you mention; I don’t consider the ability to inspire brand loyalty in millions of consumers to sell crap products a quality 🤷

        • kemsat@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          15
          ·
          5 days ago

          I would honestly consider anyone that uses Lemmy or the Fediverse to be more advanced than the average user.

      • Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        16
        ·
        5 days ago

        google is perfectly serviceable

        I would go even one step further. For dumb little things like a movie or song you can’t remember, or a factoid to win an argument amongst friends the AI summaries are really helpful.

        • fishos@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          19
          arrow-down
          5
          ·
          edit-2
          5 days ago

          Yeah no. Just had someone IRL try to use the AI summary to prove something that was blatantly false.

          Even more fitting: factoid means something believed to be true, but is false. It’s not a “cute little tidbit of info” like you used it as.

          So yeah, AI summaries are full of factoids, you are correct.

          • Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            7
            arrow-down
            5
            ·
            edit-2
            5 days ago

            I actually did use “factoid” correctly here. According to the Cambridge dictionary the Definition is

            an interesting piece of information

            And that’s exactly what I use it for. I’m not talking about debating economic policy on national television (but tbf, the ai summary probably does a better job than the talking heads haha) but just stupid little things you “”“debate”“” with your friends.

            Some examples Ive used it for recently.

            “Were the cars in mad max real cars” and heres the response

            Yes, the vehicles in the Mad Max films, especially Fury Road, are based on real, modified cars, rather than CGI or camera effects, with over 150 real cars used in the filming of Fury Road. Here’s a more detailed look

            And then it had some details about some of the big cars. And then it linked to articles like this one or this one

            Or “how much does a da Vinci (surgery robot) cost?”, and heres it’s answer:

            The cost of a da Vinci surgical robot typically ranges from $1.5 million to $2.5 million.

            And then had some details of different models of da Vinci machines. But it also linked to this source and this source

            And those are just two of the recent searches I have in my search history. For stupid factoids like that it’s really great. For anything more nuanced or complicated than that it falls apart.

            And yeah it has incorrect information sometimes. But you know what else gets incorrect information? Me when I drunkenly skim the first article that pops up while my friends drunkenly yell over each other. So id say it washes out.

            • fishos@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              arrow-down
              3
              ·
              5 days ago

              that’s funny, cus the AI summary for “what is a factoid” told me it’s an incorrectly believed idea. So which is it? Is the AI correct and you’re wrong, or is the AI incorrect and you’re still wrong?

                • fishos@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  4 days ago

                  Whooooosh

                  If the AI summary is incorrect, then his point about trusting AI is incorrect. If the AI summary is correct, then it contradicts what he said the definition is and he is once again incorrect. Literally, no matter what, he’s wrong. It’s was a fun way to show the absurdity of blindly trusting AI. His logic itself is flawed.

        • Ulrich@feddit.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          5 days ago

          or a factoid to win an argument amongst friends the AI summaries are really helpful.

          People have tried to use these against me already. It’s not helpful because all they get is a mouthful of how shitty and chronically incorrect AI summaries are.

            • Ulrich@feddit.org
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              11
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              5 days ago

              If you knew when it was and was not correct then you wouldn’t need it in the first place.

    • dohpaz42@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      23
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      5 days ago

      Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc all suffer the same problems. I’d love to hear other alternatives (and I don’t mean alternatives like searx that is little more than lipstick on a pig and proxies search results from said engines).

      • Alk@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        5 days ago

        There’s nothing perfect. I use Kagi which uses many other indexes including Google, but with a focus on “small web” results and no ads or mandatory AI nonsense.

        …but it costs money.

        Well worth it in my opinion. My results have been better than Google for me, and I’ve been using it for like a year now. Highly recommend.

        • dohpaz42@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          5 days ago

          Here are my gripes:

          1. Uses Bing for a backend
          2. Too many ads
          3. Tries to be too much like Google
          4. Continuous attempts to force feed me AI
          • 60d@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            edit-2
            5 days ago

            Ah yes, I have to admit the constant AI shilling does make me want to look elsewhere. I also didn’t know that it’s basically askjeeves but for B‽ng, lol

        • Ulrich@feddit.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          5 days ago

          That’s not the word I would use but yeah, it’s basically a frontend for Bing. And what’s especially annoying is that it serves you links to unpaywalled news that’s behind an MSN paywall.

          • 60d@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            4 days ago

            Thanks for that because I do feel like, thinking back to earlier today it wasn’t giving me the video result I was looking for when searching for “Chinese tiktok make America great again”

        • desktop_user@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          5 days ago

          shoves results about completely different contexts of the words, most noticeable when trying to look up game mechanics which share names with IRL phenomenon.

          • 60d@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            4 days ago

            I’m starting to be convinced that it really is being enshittified almost daily lol

      • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        5 days ago

        I daily DDG but !g bang out to Google 80% of the time

        Hit the back button once this month though - DDG was better than Google!!!

        Has only happened twice I’ve noticed in a year!

        DDG, pls use my data to be less terribly terrible (and stop rearranging results, as reported years ago)

        PS: will get Kagi once I find a job cuz too lazy or something to get into SearXNG properly like I should. And Mullvad’s got Leta btw which like bundles searches for privacy

    • Scubus@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      5 days ago

      Google supports searching “specific phrases”, -excluding_words, +ensuring_keywords, and whatever * is. I havent found any other indexers that allow me to make use of searches with that level of detail, which is often the only way you can find specific things these days.

      • shikitohno@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        12
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        5 days ago

        Duckduckgo does plenty with its advanced search operators, which are pretty similar to Google’s. * is a wildcard, meaning if you were to search c*y, results word return something including a sequence beginning with ‘c’ and ending with ‘y’, but having any sequence of characters in between them.

      • Nelots@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        5 days ago

        Pretty sure Yandex at least allows for all of those search operators. As far as meta search engines, basically anything that uses google’s results like Startpage will also likely support them.

    • madthumbs@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      5 days ago

      Left out shadow banning raw footages on YT while front page promoting the same footage with heavy edits and narration that lied about what happened (‘see no resisting’). -Leading to riots, increased racism, civil unrest, anti-cop sentiment, innocent lives, jobs, and property lost, etc. All to distract us from a racist genocide they support.

      Yandex is the only search I’m aware of that passes tests (using verifiable facts) on the subject. -Grok the only AI.

    • ThePantser@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      33
      ·
      5 days ago

      -fuck

      Seems to still work and not affect the search. In my limited testing that is. If this keeps working someone just needs to create a extension the auto adds -fuck to all searches.