[ftlio]

Google search has become nearly unusable, while Microsoft’s core consumer products still seem OK - you can still install Windows 11 without a Live account through a workaround.

I can run games on Linux and do work on a Mac. Search is still a problem, but I am increasingly turning to ChatGPT for searching anything non current event, with Bing increasingly.

I was a full Google stack, Android, Home, TV, everything, for a few years. I don’t know about trust, but Google products just flat out suck with constant disappointment, and search is no exception.

[araes]

Part of the issue with search, I cannot 'totally' blame on Google. (Note: I blame them some. Made $300,000,000,000 last year. Have 140,000 employees. Their main product is search + ads. There should be an army of programmers working to make the experience relevant / pleasant / not unusable).

However, there's also an army that works to fill every single slightly "wrong" search result with 100's of answers (they're not even necessarily malicious).

I tried to search for HyperPhysics [1] the other day. Yet, for the life of me could not remember the exact name. Hypertextbook, Super Physics, Super Curricula, Super Simple Physics, ect... In some ways its just name collision. Only so many words that mean "hyper, super, awesome" and 10^10 humans that want them.

[1] http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/index.html

[bagacrap]

> Google search has become nearly unusable

This is a weird meme given how many billions of searches Google handles daily.

[TillE]

Google is fine if you're searching for restaurants or a Wikipedia article. I'm sure they handle the vast majority of their mundane queries well.

It's awful, much worse than it used to be, if you're looking for some specific piece of information. Put a word or phrase in quotes, and it will still just ignore it after the first 3 or 4 results and give you a bunch of irrelevant garbage.

[darklycan51]

I legit have to go to bing (or duckduckgo if I wanna keep it private or so they claim at least) to get actual search results lol...

[bagacrap]

That's a fine anecdote but apparently unrelatable to the vast majority.

[ftlio]

Not as weird as this meme. You assume it’s some signal expression rather than that I would just pay Google money every month to provide search results that don’t prioritize advertisements over more accurate results that don’t calculate a margin.

[pb7]

YouTube Premium exists and there are still masses of people that refuse to pay for it despite hating ads. You’re in the minority.

[exodust]

> refuse to pay

Interesting way to put it. Almost like refusing to pay the local thugs for "protection", and seeing the consequences of not paying get worse every year.

Google increased ads on youtube to the point where it's now ugly and excessive. This doesn't make premium more valuable in its own right. It makes avoiding premium more uncomfortable, which is a lot different than your implication that people refuse or can't see the value of premium.

[pb7]

Just because you got something for free at the start doesn't mean it will stay that way. Other platforms like Netflix, HBO, Hulu, etc keep increasing prices year after year, even creating paid ad-supported tiers, and since most people pay YouTube by watching ads, ads are increasing commensurately too. Where's the confusion? The "refusal" refers to there being options where you don't have to see ads. I don't get to watch Netflix for free with ads; how is that better?

[exodust]

> "Other platforms like Netflix..."

Youtube contains endless "generative fill" content made with all the care and effort of a vending machine. Lifeless, worthless, rinse/repeat content made by content spammers. A slap in the face in terms of value for money.

On Youtube's homepage recently I saw this video: "5 Tallest Building Demolitions in History". Worth a look, right? Wrong. Narrated with an artificial voice, and containing about 11 minutes of stock video clips, padding things out to reach the 12 minute length. The few seconds of demolition footage is fleeting and extremely low quality because the uploader doesn't own the footage.

Netflix isn't infected with such blatantly empty clickbait rubbish, so is a poor comparison if you're tying to say "but you pay $15 a month for Netflix, why not Youtube"?

While Youtube provides a "tip jar" called "super thanks", Google takes a 30% cut of whatever is tipped to the creator, ON TOP of what they take from advertising and premium fees. Google takes and takes. They increase ads as if there's no limit. Do you think advertising should have limits? Or are you fine with YouTube becoming wall to wall repetitive intrusive ads unless people pay the protection fee to not suffer the onslaught?

[ftlio]

Where did YouTube enter the discussion? Also yes the things I search for would be in the minority of overall searches, but apparently finding Google unable to fulfill searches for these things despite it being able to do so 7 years ago is just memetic transference and not an actual critique.

[pb7]

Your comment was hard to read for me but I took it as you want a premium search that prioritizes results instead of ads. And I’m telling you that another popular product, YouTube, has premium and people don’t want to pay for it. So premium search would not change anything, except for a small minority of people like yourself.

The internet has changed drastically and become orders of magnitude bigger in the last 7 years. Your expectations may be unrealistic when there are so many parties that want to game the system.