[deanc]

The quality of cadbury chocolate has been getting worse over the years since Kraft bought them out. I still buy it because it looks like the same product, kinda tastes like it, and ultimately will give me what I want. I don't disagree the quality of Google's results has gone down - but you are talking about changing user behaviour here and for the majority (not you and I) google still does what it needs.

[kuhewa]

It may even be improving for most people's needs. But I think it does present a scenario where a niche search engine with a different business model could be successful (and they probably wouldn't need 10k engineers to reach parity with Google's, at least in that niche). Maybe there isn't enough of mes though.

I haven't changed search engines, and Bing won hands down when I did the Bing/Google challenge they promoted in 2012. But it is getting 'bad enough' and I need search results for projects enough where I'd try the beta if invited and would probably stick with it if it's a good experience.

Hell, if they gave me a few more Scopus-like tools for more precise queries on a version of Google scholar, I'd be sold.