Is there any hope of this getting better? I rely on the internet for most of my knowledge so it sounds like I’m doomed.
Comment on Has google stopped working for finding anything?
OpenStars@kbin.social 6 months ago
Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Even the CEO has acknowledged this. They serve you what makes THEM the most profits, not what YOU wanted, ever.
For years now, the only way to find something technical related was to add "Reddit" to the search. But then Reddit imploded as well, chasing profits over the needs of its customers.
And Twitter/X likewise is now chasing profits over the needs of its customers, causing many to flee.
As too is happening in so many other places, such as Stack overflow, and most of Hollywood itself was on strike for months, bc they have been chasing profits over the needs of its customers.
Managers think they know better than customers what you want, or at least what you are willing to put up with.
And now they are pushing AI to the rescue, to put even above the SEO results, but soon they'll have to think about actually monetizing those answers, and the cycle will repeat at the level of SEO'd AI answers.
DuckDuckGo works, for now. Maybe one day there will be a hostile takeover and it won't anymore.
Btw this phenomenon is called https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification of the internet - yes that's the official term afaik!!:-)
DJSpunTheDisc@lemm.ee 6 months ago
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I almost have never done this and I usually find what I’m looking for fairly easy. I truly don’t understand how everyone is so convinced Google is unusable now. It’s definitely not.
bravemonkey@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Sure, my non-technical family all use it too and won’t switch to anything else, but for people who rely on search for their jobs (and many others) have certainly noticed its decline.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I rely on it every day for my job. When I try to use DDG, I can’t find what I need ~40% of the time. While it does feel sometimes like Google got worse, it’s still very good and almost always finds what I’m looking for.
OpenStars@discuss.online 6 months ago
(I am giving up on kbin working)
Ymmv ofc, depending especially on what you are searching for. e.g., perhaps you often go straight to the source such as StackOverflow rather than use Google. I am not disputing your experiences, just saying that there is more going on. I still use Google often, though whenever I run into a situation where it does not work, I switch. I used to never have to switch:-(.