This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
This isn't the first time or the last time I will see these stupid stories and provide the solution: https://tenbluelinks.org/
The real headline for these stories should be "Something on computer has changed, people refuse to even ask if it can be changed".
They can use duck duck go or similar too.
I love the idea of DDG. However, I have the worst fucking luck getting usable results with it. Often times getting irrelevant results, even with decades of experience of practicing my search fu. I've even done some tests of jumping over to Bing to do the same search and getting far better results (if DDG even still uses Bing as a backend...).
Kagi is somewhat better, but is also lacking.
I use ddg 95% of the time. I only use the other ones when I can't find what I'm looking for.
Also, turning off AI is an option in DDG.
Just like it is in Google.
I missed the old Google maybe 15 years ago when I switched away from it as a default search. It's not the AI.
Yeah it wasn't AI. It was the head of Google Ads (who got promoted to head of Google Search) that changed the search results so they were less accurate so users would spend more time on the results page and thus look at ads longer.
The Man Who Killed Google Search
There's also the profiling - serving different results depending on whether you're logged in or not.
serving different results depending on whether you’re logged in or not.
The real thing is serving different results depending on what your profile contains. Even if you're not logged in, you still have a profile based on your IP address, time of day, freqency of queries, previous queries, etc.
Could be, but consider even the simplest example: being logged in, searching for something, then with the same browser, same everything, you log out and repeat the search: you will most likely get slightly different results. That might overlap with what you described as well.
They used to have an option to personalize results or not, but that went away long ago.
My recent searches are definitely personalized, which usually results in good things, but it makes it impossible to tell somebody else "hey, just search for this: ... "
Yeah, google been shit for over a decade now. Not long after SEO became the norm and Google figured out a way to profit from it.
LLMs have saved internet searching. For the first time in years, i am getting (usually) relevant information for my questions.
And not some sponsored or SEO optimized shithole.
LLMs have saved internet searching. For the first time in years, i am getting (usually) relevant information for my questions.
I tend to disagree on that part. LLMs in a web search should be opt in, not opt out. They do help, but not always. For many searches that I have the answer right in the first result (sometimes even in its preview along the link) there's an LLM running and needlessly wasting resources, summarising very often what I already know.
I agree that LLMs should be opt-in.
However i am often working on projects with garbage or huge documentation, or community boards, that in the past would require a good bit of googlefu to figure out.
Google became absolutely useless for that task. LLMs saved internet search that isnt shallow.
Yeah, in the end it depends on the use case. Some things are a simple search away, others need compiling of information (manually or with the help of an LLM).
Same list of links?
Since when?
It used to give you what it thought was the most relevant based on the terms placed in the search field. It was excellent.
Now it gives you: AI, youtube, sponsored links, ad links, shopping links, SEO garbage, social media links, and out of all of these there’s a good chunk that have only tangential relevance to your search at best, and then MAYBE you might get a link to a site that presents the information you seek.
Sometimes google search returns nothing at all.
Same list of garbage.
I know its love it or hate it but i use Kagi. Closest thing to old Google i've found. I haven't tried their AI stuff though.
I do sometimes use the AI feature where you opt in to the AI overview. I've found that though the AI behind it is rather basic (same with the chat), its still decent when you want a quick answer instead of SEO slop (at least when you dont care for perfect accuracy).
Try an AI prompt like: Give me a 2006 style Google search result of the modern web for the search "Apple Pie Recipe"
They can still do it, if you ask.
Hah, I can’t blieve I’d have to use AI to get rid of AI results.
Edit: OMG. It actually pretty much worked. Holy shit. Can’t click through the pages of results, though.
“computah, make it like it used to be”
I haven't tried this one, but "reformat my Facebook content to look like Myspace" would be hillarious.
Even without the AI overview there’s so many AI written articles in search results that it’s hard to get through the noise. Limiting search to pre 2022 only does so much when you want information on something recent.
I don’t miss the old Google, I miss the old Internet :(
theres entire AI generated websites that are just filled with popular key words and bullshit to put it at the top of the search results.
SEO is as bad as AI when it comes to finding shit on the internet.
I miss the old internet too, before we even had search engines.. when the only way to find a webpage was a webring, or the internet yellow pages.. which was just a directory of all known urls at the time.
I wish there was a Firefox extension to filter that crap out.
Nerds missed old google five to ten years ago. It was crap way before the AI garbage, but agreed that they're shoving bs on us.
Google was really awesome at a point in time. You could throw it the most obscure query using natural language with in-text Boolean operators and the number one result would direct you to an html-only geocities page that hadn’t been updated since 1999 with the EXACT answer you needed and citations from 3-4 actual, physical books to back up that answer. IMHO, those were peak times for the internet as an information resource; approximately 1998-2008.
Now every page just seems to be a bloated, poorly-coded monument to engagement baiting, subscription model services, and ad revenue generation. It’s genuinely sad to have watched the degradation over the years…
100%, it’s weird to feel like my information access has gone back down to 90’s levels. Half the time you’re better off going to the library and flippin pages!
noai.duckduckgo.com, for at least one alternative.
CoMaps or Openstreetmaps instead of Google Maps.
ProtonMail/ProtonDrive instead of gmail, gdrive.
There are lots of alternatives, we just need to use them and tell others to use them as well.
Tutamail.
Protonmail announced their intention to gargle MAGA balls some months back...
In the past when I tried different engines, I’d eventually get frustrated with a specific queery and resort to google to get what I needed
Lately, if duck duck fails me, if I bother trying google then the results are even worse. It feels like the end of an era
google is good if you're seeking to buy stuff
Oh yes, I remember. I remember that Google started to become worse and worse starting around 2018. By 2020, SEO was too damned good and ruined so much of the results. By 2024, trying to find technical info became so difficult I'd end up searching with DDG which was sometimes better.
All this was before AI slop existed.
Don't blame AI. Blame SEO by commercial interests. They've been generating slop since the early 2000s. AI just makes them faster at it.
I miss the actual old Google, where the searches wouldn't intentionally show you a lot of things you don't want in order to keep you searching longer for their ad revenue. The one where if you put something between "quotes" it would only show you results with those specific words, and you coul -minus a word to specifically exclude results that contained that word.
Google has been a piece of shit for like 15+ years now. They're even making android suck.
Old google? I miss av.com (AltaVista)
Hey bro reminder to talk to your doctor about colon health
Ouch. Let me get my walker and shuffle off to the computer room. I have some new tapes for my C64.
I miss veronica
AskJeeves
They'll bring old Google back and call it Google Classic. They will also have a Google Zero, with zero calories, and, of course, Google with a lemon twist.
It's a little annoying to set up but all of my browsers have noai.duckduckgo.com as the default search engine. I haven't seen an AI search result in ages and feels a little like the old Internet.
I don't know if the Internet as a whole is dead, but search definitely is. Even DuckDuckGo requires me to jump through hoops just to get it to show results that contain ALL of the words in my search string, not just ONE of them. Seriously, if you can't find any matching results just tell me that!
