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I'm also finding the same difficulties with DuckDuckGo.

I don't think Google is "terrible" at anything; they know their stuff. But they have created peverse incentives around advertising which lead to this.

They're paid by the advert clicks, so if you actually find a search result you're not clicking on an advert.

The definition of an advert is "I want to push something at you that's only indirectly relevant to what you are looking for, and I'm willing to pay for that" -- that's what an advert _is_.

In my simple brain, I'd happily see Google paid per-display (not click) of adverts. Then my incentives (to find a search result) have a fighting chance of aligning with theirs. Show me the advert, in a separate column marked "adverts".

But I appreciate this is a vast over-simplification their broader business.

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Then they try to keep you using the system longer