I completely agree with you OP. In fact, I'll repost my exact response I commented on another post from several days ago discussing the enshittification of google.

Wikipedia still exists. The vast majority of my searches begin there these days.

More nuanced things I use Startpage or Qwant. Yandex for images.

Even more nuanced, site:reddit.com

For even more nuanced, ask OpenAI then factcheck.

I hate to admit it, but OpenAI (ChatGPT) has been the most consistently reliable out of all of them these days. I know people like to pull out the random stat that something like “50%” of AI generated answers are wrong, but my rebuttal is recall how we were told for nearly a decade the same exact thing about Wikipedia, and to never reference Wikipedia, and “Anyone can edit” Wikipedia, etc etc. Now it’s one of the most valuable strongholds of information online. And the solution to both is the same.

Sources.

Check the sources on Wikipedia, check the sources on OpenAI.

Just last night, I found myself diving deep into a long session on the history of gene editing therapy that medical science has advanced in recent years for the experimental treatment of HIV utilizing tools like CRISPR and zinc-finger nucleases, and how they work. It reminded me of the early days of Wikipedia where everyone got sucked into clicking blue link after blue link until you were reading the biography of some obscure Flemish poet or battle from the Heian period of Japan.

What’s best is as a learning tool (as opposed to catch-all crystal ball with infallible logic), it allows you to ask open-ended clarifying questions which are difficult to do with search engines.

“I don’t understand, can you provide an analogy to better illustrate this process?”

It’s like communicating with a real teacher again, and it allows you the leeway to grasp concepts much more thoroughly and quickly than before. And even gives you the ability to engage in thought experiments to help demonstrate your understanding of the topic. Think the early days of Hank Green’s CrashCourse.

Things aren’t as hopeless as they seem, they’re just shifting. The real issue comes from attempting to cling to old tools which are now breaking and worn down. If mowing the lawn is getting harder, you eventually replace the blades instead of continuing to use the same worn-down lawnmower, right?

I think people need to let go of the glory days of Google and acknowledge it for what it’s become, and understand that it equally may be some time before another search engine that isn’t doomed to just be another Google clone arrives to replace it. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t any alternatives left to obtaining information online anymore.

If all else fails, we still have libraries. And E-books, university archives, and z-library too.

It’s less a battle of Us vs. Google and more a battle of people who still make the effort to seek out information vs. those who will consume whatever corporate-sponsored misinformation they are fed.