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smaudet • yesterday at 2:51 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

Google has become useless.

Possibly, it's worse than useless, even harmful now.


Replies

zerd • yesterday at 8:22 PM

Searching for anything product related is now AI answer, followed by “Sponsored products”, followed by “Popular products”, a few hits, then “Shop by store”, and “In store nearby”. Maybe 2% is actual content, the rest is ads.

Their prediction was spot on: “We expect that advertising-funded search engines will be inherently biased toward the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.”

encom • yesterday at 5:45 PM

Web search is just broken right now. Today I was looking for documentation for a specific Lenovo motherboard. I gave both DDG and Google the exact model number and both returned irrelevant useless bullshit. DDG doesn't include all search words unless you quote it: "foomatic" "m900" "dingus". This scenario happens almost daily. DDG is awful, but all the alternatives are worse. It's all so tiresome.