The last 25 years of Google’s history can be boiled down to a battle against the Google bomb. Is the search engine finally losing to its hijackers?
  • HipPriest@kbin.social
    22·
    2 years ago

    I mean the article is specifically about Google search. Which might have gone downhill since whenever it first came out with the introduction of ads (sorry, ‘Sponsored Results’) but I’m not seeing significantly better competition for delivering search results. Everyone is still just aping the brand leader.

    DuckDuckGo is obviously better for privacy for example but it doesn’t seem to have any ambition except to deliver the same results as Google but without the ads and tracking which is ok but not a big enough draw except for people already concerned about privacy. Bing gets essentially the same results but if anything seems more spammy than Google with pop ups about making it or edge your default search engine or browser. It feels like other search engines just take Google search as something to copy and put their spin on it though.

    I’d say search is one of the things Google is still getting right enough to earn its place as the leader. Some things it does well, some things it has badly declined on (someone above mentioned Google assistant hardly understanding anything anymore, when it used to be the best in this area too), but generally you can replace most Google things with programmes doing things their own way. Search engines just feel a bit like reskins to me

    • ripcord@kbin.social
      5·
      2 years ago

      DuckDuckGo is obviously better for privacy for example but it doesn’t seem to have any ambition except to deliver the same results as Google but without the ads

      I don’t think duckduckgo has ANY control over improving the search results. Except maybe switching to a different engine.

      • micka190@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 years ago

        Pretty much. The reason Google’s search results were so good was because of the information they had on you and on other users who made similar searches. I’m not advocating for DDG to start tracking users, though. But it’ll be hard for them to have a “Google-like” search experience (single search bar with no other parameters) without that kind of data.

        • pewter@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          2 years ago

          Google immediately jumped ahead in search when it started by having a simple webpage and using PageRank. This was a while before there were even Gmail accounts and all the tracking we’re given now.

          At this point I’d settle for a search company that doesn’t care to track you, uses general (not specific) predictive search, implements Boolean search, and isn’t diminished in quality by SEO.

          That last criterion is the hardest one. It might not even be feasible.

    • iopq@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      Brave search uses a different index, so I like searching it first since it will give me significantly different results

    • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      Honestly Bing has outperformed Google for me lately to the point where I might set as default on some browsers.

    • bigredgiraffe@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 years ago

      I recently switched to Kagi and the difference is astounding. I knew it was bad but it’s just crazy, especially on mobile. The ability to personally change a domains ranking in your search results is a game changer too, now my results aren’t polluted with Amazon results as an example.