You noticed how google search became unusably shit a few years ago

[lispi314@udongein.xyz]

@prisixia @Stellar @ocean Publisher corposcum did their utmost to make it impossible for libraries to have practical malware-free access to ebooks through libraries.

Borrowing the book to scan by oneself and digitize it is onerous and tedious.

[lispi314@udongein.xyz]

@Paradox It seriously covers multiple pages at this point on the worst search-engines.

Any topic that /isn't/ particularly niche suffers from it more.

[darwinwoodka@mastodon.social]

@ocean

duckduckgo ftw

[darwinwoodka@mastodon.social]

@svenjacobs @ocean

duckduckgo

[galamadryade@piaille.fr]

@ocean That's why I now use duckduckgo. SO MUCH BETTER.

[delve@deadinsi.de]

@ocean Least surprising revelation of the year to be honest.

I think the exact same thing is true of YouTube, which is so dominant that they can make it shittier every day and people will still use it.

[peterbrown@mastodon.scot]

@ocean “The study suggests that poor organic search results actually benefit Google's bottom line in two ways: they make paid advertisements more valuable to users seeking accurate information, and they force users to refine their searches multiple times, exposing them to more advertising in the process.”

Aaargh!!

(glad I’ve stopped using Google as a search engine)

[alpha1beta@libretweet.com]

@ocean is there a source on this?

[heptasean@social.tchncs.de]

@Paradox By the way: Never heard of “Harold and the Purple Crayon” before, but https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Harold+and+the+Purple+Crayon%22+PDF results in a PDF with a Hindi translation (including the English original, but black and white without purple) and a PDF with a version with additional graphic explanations for people with disabilities on the first search result page. … which probably is as good as it gets for a work still under copyright.

[heptasean@social.tchncs.de]

@lispi314 You are not only talking about the snippet from *Google's* LLM at the top of the search results, but also about the other results? Haven't had *that* many obviously LLM-generated, but perhaps my interests are just niche enough. @Paradox

[gcvsa@mstdn.plus]

@ocean that's...actually diabolical.

[paradox@raru.re]

@HeptaSean
It's an old kid's book about a boy that explores the world while drawing it all with his crayon.

Thanks. ^_^

[dorothywillson@mastodon.social]

@ocean right

[cassolotl@toot.wales]

@ocean Source: https://journalrecord.com/2025/02/20/is-google-making-search-worse-to-sell-more-ads/

[lispi314@udongein.xyz]

@HeptaSean @Paradox Not the snippet, no. Pages on other domains linked by the search engine results.

There's a certain... meandering meaninglessness to the text with a bunch of huge empty spaces on those sites (thanks adblockers) that's typical.

Oh sure, the meaningless nonsense also used to get written-up by humans before but I don't consider spam to be worth more when written by humans instead of autogenerated.

[mdione@en.osm.town]

@ocean where is this coming from? What's the source?

[anne_delong@musician.social]

@Mikal @ocean

Well, as with other companies, competition and product reviews are needed to link good service to profits. So maybe consumers should change up their search engines.

Here's an article from PC Magazine that compares them:

https://www.pcmag.com/picks/go-beyond-google-best-alternative-search-engines

#searchengines

[cosmocatalano@mastodon.social]

@ocean this big issue here is that everyone else's search is still worse

[jesterchen@social.tchncs.de]

@ocean Nein!

Doch.

Oh...

[amazing_helenab@mastodon.social]

@ocean