Crazy how Google has changed in the last couple of decades.

It went from a refreshingly new tech offering incredible things to becoming a behemoth trying to maximize revenue, just like everyone else.

When Google started every service was independent. The moment they merged it all, and the use of Android taking everything on the go in your pocket changed their way of doing business.

Never forget that Google is an advertising company.

I've stopped using Google Search and use DuckDuckGo for years now.

I've also stopped using Google services on my phone, which runs a nice streamlined and secure version of Android called GrapheneOS

If Google disappeared tomorrow it wouldn't affect me much. I would recommend other people to try to see how dependent they are on Google and plan accordingly.

Google can't save anything. The internet does not need Google. Farewell Google

I never look for health information on Google. If you do, first up is always Mayo Clinic, WebMD, and HealthLine. They're all very mainstream with zero useful information.

The good stuff is in the comments, on Youtube videos and places like SN.

As an SEO I've watched this downfall in real time and it's sooooo bad,

First we accepted rich snippets and instant answers stopping user click-through Then they expanded adds above the fold Then YouTube links started to outrank content

and we sort of found our way around that, people who wanted more than a one line answer still clicked through so if you sold a product, you could still make revenue with a more serious user clicking through, but ad revenue and affiliate sites took a knock and many died

But i'd say in the last 2 years its really gone down hill faster, Googl wasn't prepared for ChatGPT and spammers took full advantage, they would copy pasta sites and use LLMs to paraphrase and post content, spinning up huge sites that would steal traffic.

Google had to patch

Then they did the same thing, but but bought expired domains that had a previous history

Google had to patch

Then they bought subdomains on popular sites (domain reputation abuse) and spammed it

Google is still busy patching it

As for the HCU and YMYL shit, that's all biased towards big business and big sites, niche sites are getting creamed and even if you are a good quality content niche site, Reddit, linkedin pulse and quora posts about your post outranks you

I've been using qwant mostly for personal searches, it reminds me of google 10 years ago in terms of search relevancy

They were so slow, AI is disrupting search and Microsoft is ahead now.

I can't remember the last time I used Google Search. Maybe some of these changes will cause more people to switch to alternatives, although I don't have high hopes. I have been surprised by how many people I've had complain about Google and end up asking me for search engine recommendations though.

I use kagi

"A spokesperson for Google tells the BBC that the company only launches changes to Search after rigorous testing confirms that the shift will be helpful for users".. it fails to mention that the "users" it means re the advertisers that "use" google's services to push products and the in-house google departments that "use" their engine to sell their own things. The people typing things into the searchbar, they're not users, they're the cattle.

Google search is very rudimentary at the end.

It does its best to show you the result, but it's no different than doing a search on a database and get the dataset, when what you really want is data analysis.

AI will hopefully able to sort through all the relevant info and come up with a good summary. And not the current basic Google search and sum up whatever result it got.