Google's been garbage for years now, I kind of miss Copernic Pro which is what I used before Google it searched all the search engines available and combined and resorted all the results.
Google was perfect at launch but in recent years it's worse than Yahoo!.
If you're tech savvy, look into selfhosting SearXNG.
I think there are public instances as well.
I stopped using Google at the same time I closed my accounts with Facebook, instagram, Reddit and Amazon. Currently I'm using Ecosia which I think is German. I’m dumping all the US companies I can based on all the Trump crap. It is taking time and effort but I should be able to actually close the Google account soon and I replaced windows with Linux on all but one of my PCs.
Ecosia still uses American services though - they use Google, Bing, Yahoo and Wikipedia for search results.
Yeah but don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Among other things, they just recently announced that they're starting to build an alternative index with Qwant.
You're right but it's still important to point out in this case since an American index would be subject to any American censorship law. It's better to use Ecosia than Google for sure but we still gotta be aware of the type of bias we're working with.
I'm using Qwant, used Ecosia before. Really OK for most stuff. I still revert to googling occasionally - mainly for local businesses on maps and sometimes shopping results. But I agree, don't let perfect be the enemy of good, well said.
Google maps is still the best for looking up local businesses and reviews. I wish people would go back to using a modern version of yellow pages.
What about DuckDuckGo?
Everyone whines because it's built on bing but it's fine and respects privacy better than most
I work in an education setting and in the last month, Google started preloading the contents of other sites directly on the search page. It is wreaking havoc when combined with our blocking tools because kids will do a Google search for something innocuous and the page will immediately get blocked because it tried to load a result from Reddit or coursehero or something else we have blocked.
It's incredibly frustrating.
Google search has sucked for a couple years now. DuckDuckGo is better for everything except maps.
Thats because for some ungodly reason they use Apple Maps. Not sure why they dont integrat with an OpenStreetMaps like service. At least that way users can start contributing to fill the gaps
If you have to stick with google, you can use udm=14. https://tedium.co/2024/05/17/google-web-search-make-default/ You can set it as default search provider.
This is available in the UI too - there's a tab labeled "Web". Sometimes it's hiding under "More".
Adding it to the search provider URL is a good idea though.
time to switch to Qwant, ecosia, or duckduckgo
the page will immediately get blocked because it tried to load a result from Reddit or coursehero or something
Does that mean any search (AI insight notwithstanding) will get blocked if it includes a Reddit, Coursera or something on the blocklist result at all?
Because if yes, that's much more than just asinine. It's basically blocking entire search topics due to the sheer fact that Reddit will appear on the furst page of Google a lot.
That is exactly what is happening. They type in the search query on their Chromebook (for example, "why do dry erase markers float", the results page flashes for a second and then the "this page is blocked" screen comes up saying they were blocked from Reddit, et al. Without them clicking on any search results.
And 2 kids can do the exact same search at the same time and get blocked for different sites or only one will get blocked.
I switched when the answers I got started to become bullshit. I’d google a simple question just to double check if it was correct, but it gave me something completely different. Something so out of the realm of possibility that I was baffled.
I check the sources for the answer and they were not even related. After that I started paying more attention to how messed up google had become, and I had enough.
Google scholar however is still something I need.. even though I dislike American corporations.
It's kind of unreal that they took something that worked perfectly well for 25 years and then fucked it up entirely overnight, for no good reason.
Stick in bike spokes meme.
They did that to drive up short term ad revenue and it worked, and joy was in their greedy little hearts. They also did figure out that poisoning search results drives away users, and that search is kinda the fastest gateway drug to their entire ecosystem.
But they're stuck. Fixing search would lower their ad revenue, and stock holders would kill them for that.
Also, the way SEO is gamed, it's really hard to unenshittify the internet. It's not just their ads, it's everyone making fake bullshit that pulls the right levers to get to the top of a search.
Why would I google something when the first answer is an inferior AI to chatgpt. I'll just use a better AI.
Consider Kagi far superior.
I ditched Google and Gmail.
Best AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google - included in one $25/mo subscription with our Ultimate plan.
Same trash.
Privacy company offers privacy focused LLMs for users that would've otherwise paid for ChatGPT. Unbelievable
Did you actually ever try Kagi or do you just want to spit uninformed delusions?
Some people want those features. You don't have to use them.
These numbers underline the current trend to choose European services instead of American ones, which followed the trend to deGoogle.
[the chart shows stats for American Google, American Bing, Russian Yandex, American Yahoo!, American DuckDuckGo, and Other]
Yeah, that statement wasn't supported by the data at all. It seemed to only be included as a way to link to their other articles about European alternatives and de-Googling.
Russian Yandex
Exceptionally good at finding torrent sites and other piracy outlets, because they aren't working hand-in-glove with American broadcasters to censor and shadowban these links. Google, Bing, DDG, and the other American mainline search sites all focus on feeding end-users into a discrete set of Web2 mega-site sponsors. Yandex uses the older web crawlers and indexing tools, so it gives more honest (abet fuzzier and less reliable) results. And since nobody really gives a shit about Yandex, the efforts to game its algorithm have been comparatively minimal.
Yandex also has the benefit of being relatively English-friendly, while other popular non-English search sites like Baidu, Qwant, and Naver don't cater too quite so freely.
Been using Ecosia for up to a year now probably. I like it and I don't need anything else.
I abandoned Google when they started throwing shopping links at the top of every search, even when searching for things that have no relevance to shopping, and they started artificially promoting scams and paid material above actual results.
Google Search was best around 10-15 years ago when their only focus was providing the best results they could (remember when you could actually click the top result and you would be taken to the most applicable page instead of some unrelated ad or scam?). Now their focus is on providing the best product possible for their actual customers (paid advertisers) even when it means trashing their own product in the process.
15+ years ago you could search for an error code, or an error message, or a part number and actually find it.
I went long enough without using Google (probably a year-ish) that, when I accidentally made a Google search a few days ago, it was a jarring experience.
It felt wrong the same way other search engines did when I first deGoogled. It was kind of nice actually.
I’ve fully switched to ecosia. I much prefer their efforts, and they seem to fund decent projects unlike a lot of other carbon offset companies.
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