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When Google was new, people LOVED it. As a search engine, it delivered top-quality results. We found what we were looking for! Later, when it started putting paid results at the top, people were annoyed, but not too seriously bothered, because it wasn't hard to just scroll past the promoted listings and get to the real stuff. Over time, though, greed and a sincere contempt for the users have changed everything. Google search results are poor quality most of the time. Ads, ads, and AI-generated content.

It's not just Google. Any search site is usually terrible. At my grocery store's site, I search for a particular item. If they don't carry it, they don't give me a result that says, "Sorry, we don't have this." Instead, they just show me a bunch of other stuff, most of which isn't even related to the item I want. And if they do find my item, they randomly mix other things into the results, so I can't be sure I've really found the right thing. Amazon does this routinely.

There are quite a few Google search alternatives available now. Most of them brag about how they, unlike Google, don't track you or sell your data. They may or may not provide better search results. Most offer an AI option.

AI searching is problematic in many ways. Too many chatbots simply make things up, or are misled by fake websites and articles written by other AIs. I really don't know if there is a high-quality, reliable way to search the Internet any more, or even a good way to search the local supermarket.

• It only takes onr fake webpage to fool shopping bots
• How a fake deodorant got recommended by AI
• This is why Google search is almost dead
• The enshittification of everything, everywhere, all at once

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash