[philippoi]

I've been lamenting this demise of Google over the last year or two, but it's been especially foul the last few months.

Similar to your biking anecdote, I was trying to find any simple trouble shooting help for a home coffee brewer that suddenly stopped working. I couldn't find any results in the first 4-5 pages that weren't trying to sell me a new machine.

The manufacturer is also partly to blame, because I couldn't find anything remotely relevant either on the product page or in the PDF owner's manual.

It's a shame what these tools have become when they could be so much more.

[jen729w]

I’ve tried switching over to DuckDuckGo.com a bunch of times over the years, but this time the move has stuck.

I think one of the reasons is that I do not get a bunch of the ‘smart’ stuff that Google tries to do for me. In a way it’s like using a search engine from 10 years ago ... and it’s better.

There are things that I do miss — quick cards for things like currency conversion, flight details, that sort of thing - but the mighty Duck is getting better at those, and if I need to reach in to Google I can always just !g it.

[FutureSpec]

I find that hard to believe. I used the phrase "home coffee brewer stopped working" just now in Google and see nothing but troubleshooting articles and forums from the very first result onward.

[userbinator]

If you put in an exact model then I suspect the results will be very different.

The other infuriating thing that's related is if you're trying to find a schematic or service manual, Google thinks you're just looking for the (often useless) user manual. Searching for the user manual does not make it think you're looking for the service manual... it's absolutely idiotic, because who would search for "service manual" but actually want a user manual? Beyond some weird conspiracy theory involving anti-right-to-repair, I can't explain why.

[hombre_fatal]

I don't even understand the thread-OP's complaint. Googling "bike forums" gives me pages of what they say they can't find.

[Mauricio_]

Just curious: Did you ever find what you were looking for? If so, can you find it with Bing / DDG? It not, is it in the web at all? Maybe there just isn't a webpage for what you want.