Has google stopped working for finding anything?

Submitted ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨sighofannoyance@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/e2cfab67-e639-4b8d-a309-1a0a99f311fa.jpeg

Google search failed to even find a hollywood movie, even after 1 hour of attempts. I don’t really care about the movie, but I am terrified by the prospect that google now ceased to function on this basic level. Why is this happening?

I understand the explanations of seo and other stuff like spam content. But why are there NO relevant results at all.

I wouldn’t mind having to start wading through results at page 2 or even 10 but now it utterly fails to find even the most basic things.

Things you found on the first attempt even just a year ago. Now they are effectively hidden.

To me functionally the entire internet has now vanished. I cannot access anything that I am searching for. Might as well not exist at all.

Has anybody found a way around this?

Is this on purpose? Is this an attack on the free internet, herding people to just the top 5 sites like facebook, youtube, tiktok, and so forth?

Are there search engines that still work?

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gerowen@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’ve been using DuckDuckGo for years now and it works surprisingly well for me. 9 times out of 10 I find exactly what I’m looking for in the first coupe of results. Brave Search is another independent alternative you might look into.

AI generated garbage seems to be cluttering up places like Google.

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- BluesF@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Brave search is great, I changed over and haven’t needed anything else since. There’s no dedicated product search, which is a shame, but it does call out prices on the main search so it’s still useful even for pretty niche products.
  
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Carighan@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
No, can’t say I had issues like that.

And I will say that while I think Google Search has become poisoned by fake/AI results, it’s actually marginally better on Google than on something like DDG. It feels like all major search engine scraper developers just gave up on hte cat-and-mouse of blocking shit content and slowly it’s all succumbing to endless SEO bullshit. 1995 Altavista all over again ;_;

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- rottingleaf@lemmy.zip ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  1995 Altavista all over again
  
  It has been solved then by web rings, web indexes and web directories ran by humans for other humans.
  
  The issue is that such a cure is not acceptable for Google, FB etc.
  
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  - Carighan@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yeah and then their usual reply is “With how big we are, there’s no way we could hire enough moderators!”, which I agree with. They’re too big. Cut’em up!
    
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OpenStars@kbin.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨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!!:-)

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- TrickDacy@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  For years now, the only way to find something technical related was to add “Reddit”
  
  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.
  
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  - bravemonkey@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨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.
    
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  - OpenStars@discuss.online ⁨10⁩ ⁨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:-(.
    
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- DJSpunTheDisc@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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LemmyIsFantastic@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It’s not great but it is more than usable. What movie are you searching for that you can’t find what you need?

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- sighofannoyance@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  it’s a movie about a transdimenisonal monster trying to taking over our planet and universe. It’s like an amorphous pile of celltissue that has tentacles and hair sticking out of it, and one singular large (in the movie yellow) blue eye. It’s in an alternate universe that had biological computer instead of silicon based.
  
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  - caseyweederman@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    New challenge to everybody who reads this: identify that movie using only Google.
    
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  - banana_head@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    From Bard. Any hits?
    
    Based on your description, there are a few possibilities for the movie title:
    
    Annihilation (2018): This sci-fi horror film features a mysterious, shapeshifting entity from another dimension that resembles a shimmering mass of cells. It has a singular yellow eye and its goal is to consume and assimilate everything in its path. While not explicitly biological computers, the film explores themes of consciousness and adaptation within biological systems.
    
    The Thing (1982): This John Carpenter classic depicts a shapeshifting alien parasite that can imitate any living organism. Although not from another dimension, it exhibits the amorphousness and tentacle-like appendages you mentioned. Additionally, a large eye is shown briefly when the creature transforms into a dog.
    
    Videodrome (1983): David Cronenberg’s body horror film delves into the intersection of technology and flesh. While not featuring a transdimensional monster, it has grotesque imagery of bio-technological merging and mutations, which might share some thematic similarities with your description.
    
    However, based on the detail about “biological computers” specifically, there’s a chance it could be a smaller indie film or one outside the mainstream.
    
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  - TrickDacy@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    You don’t know the name of it? That sounds like a generic 1965 B movie. .
    
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  - sanguinepar@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    When you say its eye is blue, but yellow in the movie, where is it blue? A book, a comic, something else?
    
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Adulated_Aspersion@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Even searching for obscure items returns 10,000 hits, but only the same 5 sites repeated 2,000 times.

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- ziviz@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Compounded by sites like RSSing that frame or scrape other websites. Another hit, but literally the same thing verbatim as another.
  
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solomon42069@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The first result is always an ad that is irrelevant or outright misleading, sometimes dangerous.

The second result is a plug for some stupid Google tie-in service like Shopping or Maps.

The third or fourth result is usually what I was after, if not I usually have to change my query.

Tried to switch to DDG a few years ago but it’s index was a bit lacking for my day job, may try it again though as Google is getting increasingly frustrating to use. And just not a fan of their ecosystem.

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Sirico@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
That’s is back to Lycos

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- Akasazh@feddit.nl ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Don’t step on my man hotbot
  
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DandomRude@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Sometimes I not only have the impression that good content is harder to find, but that there is less good content in general. This may have something to do with the fact that high-quality content is becoming increasingly uneconomical. Plagiarized or low effort content is much cheaper. With the rise of AI, I think this trend will only continue to intensify.

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Doxatek@mander.xyz ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It’s been getting worse and worse for me too. Even things that I used to Google that would just come up so I could find it aren’t anymore.

The YouTube search must have had an update because now it’s entirely fucking worthless too even for searching only within itself. It’ll show two relevant results and the rest just garbage.

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Raiderkev@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Duckduckgo.com is my go to solution for when Google wants to give me trash results.

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- Mighty@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  yeah no. i am WILLING duckduckgo to work as a search engine, but the results are so bad, it doesn’t do phrases well. i just searched “blue sign construction”, thinking i’d find infos about blue signs in construction sites. literally the whole first site is about “bluesign”, something to do with textile production. and the picture results are 99% just construction signs in all different colours.
  
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  - omnomed@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Image Seems fine to me.
    
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  - Gallardo994@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    This. One of the reasons I couldn’t use DDG for more than a week, and I still kept using !g inbetween. Kagi is the way to go for me.
    
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- MadBob@feddit.nl ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I get the feeling this’ll be an unpopular suggestion but I’ve used Ecosia for something like ten years and it’s never failed me. I use Duckduckgo on my Linux laptop because it came bundled and it’s still not worth changing.
  
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  - Daefsdeda@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Ecosia has been my standard for a long while now, not realky hear many people mentioning it either.
    
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MedievalGamer@lemmyhub.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I hate Google now, I was a loyal Android user since the very first Nexus and a Google account user since day 1 of Google+ (I miss you Google+), I even bought a Pixel 2 XL as soon as it came out…

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- Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I don’t like Google or apple anymore. Granted apples walled garden approach was never appealing to me. But google antics lately have just sucked the joy out of things. It’s like they’re trying to hinder me at every turn. Just give me a phone with an operating system that I can control, with all the apps I need. Why has that become so hard. Android is good because it has all the apps. But Google’s been trying to lock it down tighter than a ticks ass since they introduced safetynet.
  
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- dexa_scantron@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I also have a Pixel 2 XL! (Because I got it refurbed for $50…) But either way hi phone buddy!
  
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- spez_@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Simp
  
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atempuser23@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
no and it’s ALL googles fault. It’s not a walled garden problem, It’s a google problem. I’m searching for specific items to buy and look for small shops with online presences. Google will NOT give me results for shops that don’t advertise with them. I can even type the name of the shop into the search. Sometimes Bing, sometimes duck duck go will give the results.

I can have the site open in one window and use another to type the description of an item I am looking at AND the name of the site I am searching on google and it’s like ‘Nope’ never heard of them. i have to type the url in to the search bar then it will return a link.

Now sponsored links pop up a plenty.

We are the product being sold to advertisers. Search is working as intended.

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- sighofannoyance@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  [deleted]
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  - atempuser23@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    This experience predates the AI fad.
    
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Yoz@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Brave and duckduckgo works. I use both

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HexesofVexes@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I can give a fun example for both ddg and Google:

Earlier today I was writing an exam paper for my students, and one of the topics is “basic” normal distribution. So, I thought to myself, why not make it I testing, give them a real world normal model.

Try it yourselves - the number of bot reposts is frightening.

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- ConstipatedWatson@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Honest question: what you’ve described is very disturbing (having to wade through lots of bot reposts), but why would this be Google’s fault (or DuckDuckGo’s or Bing’s or StartPage"s or Kagi’s)?
  
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  - HexesofVexes@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    On the contrary, that is their function, one they used to be good at.
    
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  - Fal@yiffit.net ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Who cares whose fault it is?
    
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- Reddfugee42@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Maybe I’m stupid but it’s not clear what specifically to try…
  
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- Bayz0r@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  What am I supposed to be looking for that I can’t find on Google? I have no idea what basic normal distribution is but it seems google is providing plenty of useful results about it.
  
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  - HexesofVexes@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It gives normal distribution questions, but not actual use cases (I was looking for a normal model based on actual data rather than just made up values).
    
    You’re looking for normal distributions in chemistry, biology and real estate.
    
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cabron_offsets@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Yeah bruh, Google has been shit for a good long while, now.

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- Quexotic@infosec.pub ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Right. Like, I haven’t used it since reddit started to charge for API calls.
  
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  - tgxn@lemmy.tgxn.net ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yeah I switched my primary search to DDG at about the same time. It just has more relevant reulsults, especially if you’re just looking for reference to some random API or library.
    
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recapitated@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I seem to find what I need. DDG is my default search and I still end up switching over to google more than half the time to get what I’m looking for.

Do I wish Google wasn’t annoying and greedy? Yes. I don’t think any corporation owes me that specifically though. But we do owe it to each other to bring attention to it and even reduce demand for it when possible.

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- ilinamorato@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  They don’t owe me anything, no. But I don’t owe them anything either. If they aren’t serving my needs anymore (and they often aren’t), I’ll be taking my “business” (that is, my product) elsewhere.
  
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  - drev@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I share the same sentiment, but the problem is finding a better “elsewhere”.
    
    Google search used to be so far beyond the capabilities of all other search engines, but lately it’s been closing that gap from the top down. Even in its enshittified state, it still outperforms the other search engines out there more consistently, albeit just barely.
    
    That’s my experience anyway, I would love to be introduced to something better if anyone happens to have suggestions!
    
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vynlwombat@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
danluu.com/seo-spam/

Here’s an interesting read that attempts to compare search results of various search engines

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calypsopub@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Just today I was searching for a news article about a local radio personality who got fired in the last few days. Zero results. Just extraneous garbage. I was stunned.

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ConstipatedWatson@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’m late to the party and I don’t understand several things I read in the comments, so I need to ask for clarification.

What is Google’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? I looked it up, but the websites StartPage was giving me were not useful (probably ads or spam sites). Is finding these ads/spam sites the problem?

How is this a search engine’s fault? I mean, if the internet is now made by walled gardens and spam sites, search engines have trouble finding something really relevant, but how is it their fault?

I should add I navigate logged out on Firefox with the Ublock Origin and NoScript extensions (among others) so I at least don’t see Google’s ads.

I agree there are some searches where it’s next to impossible to find informed sites from spam ones: just a week ago I was looking for “Best Nintendo Switch games released in 2023” and I got lots of dubious blogs, and even when I got hits from IGN, GameSpot or PcMag sites, I realized I don’t know if any of these last sites are genuine or bought out (and checked the Wikipedia for more wisdom about their veracity), but how is it the search engine’s fault to not navigate through seas of crap?

When I search for academic things, Google or StartPage still seem to give me useful answers.

I have been wary about searches related to reviews about anything, but it just seemed to me the internet is a worse place now in general (because of walled gardens and spam)

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- woefkardoes@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The search engine makes the rules for what they deem important in finding the correct results. SEO is the practice of optimising of a web site to best get your site on the top of the list. All the painful stories about grandmothers and long lost lovers at the top of recipes are to achieve better SEO and a good example of how SEO made the internet worse.
  
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  - ConstipatedWatson@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Thanks! So it’s some sort of guidelines Google and other search engines laid out which can be exploited to maximize visibility. Very annoying indeed
    
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joel_feila@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Well since you can’t change how google works you have to just either deal with it or change search engines.

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RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Google will let you find what they want you to find. Especially if it’s a commercial product of some sort.

Long time rant of mine that google has declined in worth as far as search goes. Cramming ads, videos with ads, and preferred search results now consumes the first page of results and more. If you’re searching for a tech problem or a solution to some issue, it’s somewhat better after you get past preferred sites and garbage SEO sites all trying to sell you something, but often it’s best to use Site: search. You can’t really use modifiers like “-” or quotes very much either, the “-” simply does not work at all, and getting too specific with quotes, more than a couple words, will often result in no search results at all.

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Nadru@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’m using Duckduckgo for a while now. Pretty good

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- ilinamorato@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  DDG is great for privacy, but their results are mostly just Bing results. Which is usually fine, but rarely excellent.
  
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- vsh@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  For me it’s a bigger hit or miss. I never found what I wanted on DDG.
  
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- werefreeatlast@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It’s a ruzzian company right?
  
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  - Nadru@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I think they french ?!
    
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Pika@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I use Bing AI for complex results and duck duck go mostly, I can’t use Google search, it brings too much curated content that is different then the query

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werefreeatlast@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Yes.

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LemonLord@endlesstalk.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Discovering new search machines would be an alternative. But they all have their filters and algorithms which make it hard to find exactly what you want. In the long run the internet will be run by AI serving copyright cowbows and big governance.

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charonn0@startrek.website ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
This is why the big search engines are throwing money at large language models. They hope AI-curated results is the next revolutionary advance.

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- Goodtoknow@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Except llm written websites have made searching for things much harder turning a lot of sites into blog AI sludge
  
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quaddo@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’ll be the dense lunkhead and ask/say the obvious:

www.google.com/search?q=find+a+Hollywood+movie

I’m guessing you were trying to find a specific, older movie?

OT, but now I’m disappointed to have discovered that LMGTFY’s SSL throws a NSURLErrorDomain error. I would have used that instead.

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- sighofannoyance@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yes, the movie I mentioned was about a multidimensional entity that took hold in a biological computer created in a parallel dimension where they never got transistors but got dna instead at an early stage. Subsequently creating a biological computer that had like one giant yellor or blue eye and tentacles and just and amorphous blob of tissue in a tank.
  
  this thing tries to take over earth’s dimension aswell so the two protagonists go over to their dimension and kill the thing.
  
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  - Apeman42@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    John Dies at the End?
    
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  - workerONE@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    You should have said you didn’t know the name of the movie. It seemed like you were claiming that Google couldn’t return results when you searched for the name of the movie.
    
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  - Mycatiskai@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Have you figured it out yet because this sounds like an interesting premise and I would like to know the movie as well.
    
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  - Sotuanduso@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Were you trying to find its name? I didn’t think Google was ever good at that.
    
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  - elxeno@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    @ChatGPT@lemmings.world Can you name the movie with the following description: “movie based on a book about a multidimensional entity that took hold in a biological computer created in a parallel dimension where they never got transistors but got dna instead at an early stage. Subsequently creating a biological computer that had like one giant yellor or blue eye and tentacles and just and amorphous blob of tissue in a tank.
    
    this thing tries to take over earth’s dimension aswell so the two protagonists go over to their dimension and kill the thing.”
    
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  - merc@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Star Wars?
    
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redcalcium@lemmy.institute ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Why would google even attempt to fix their search results? Just look at your own anecdote, you just spent an hour searching stuff on google, and perhaps saw an hour worth of ads in the search result. This counts as positive metrics on some exec’s report about how search usage increase year after year.

If anything, a paid search engine like Kagi actually have reverse incentive that they want you to search as little as possible to reduce their server costs, and thus must be able to produce great search result so you won’t spend more resource searching over and over again.

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- Lemminary@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Another fucking ad, are you all for real?
  
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- Lemminary@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Another fucking ad, are you all for real?
  
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  - redcalcium@lemmy.institute ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Which one do you prefer? Duck Duck Go or Bing, which are actually have ads? I wouldn’t recommend kagi if I don’t have positive experience using it in the last two months.
    
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teft@startrek.website ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It’s why I switched to DuckDuckGo. At least there I can find the result in a few pages. Google doesn’t even respect operators anymore. Want to search for enterprise but don’t want car ads? Good luck finding captain Picard through all that nonsense.

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HootinNHollerin@slrpnk.net ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Ad company serves ads over useful information, news at 11

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- TheInsane42@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  That takes me back… I’m feeling ancient.
  
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