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by keymasta 1009 days ago
Conspiracy theory on this:

Knowing they are heading up to this big anti-trust case, they devise the following plan. They will ensure that at least in the search-engine space they are not monopolizing, by making google worse and worse until the point that no one uses it anymore. All in time for their case. Legal defense by enshitification. By the time it happens google won't be the most-used search engine.

Honestly it's not the worst idea if I was a google bigwig.

</joke> (?)

Honestly even though ChatGPT is dumb/on-drugs at times, it's really helped find information especially when asked to mention sources, and when prompted well (you have to know your requirements and be explicit). That is until the learning cutoff of course.

But yeah - it's really hit or miss too, but between it, yandex, and all the cool niche ones I've mostly picked up from HN, like Kagi, Marginalia, etc, or weirdly enough, Bing, it seems like in the last few years it has changed from google being functionally "the way" to find info, to being a plan 'b', or 'c' .. or 'z'.

Of course I'm not denying the scope of their activities in the world, or why the would be on trial for this, just noting that for me personally it's the first time it seems like there's `less` of a functional monopoly (for me and my use).

1 comments

Search traffic is too sticky and Google has entrenched itself too much for quality to matter, which is the whole point of what the DOJ is arguing. No amount of enshittification will remove Google as the default iPhone browser.
I think this is the issue that Google will face. There may be better search engines out there but they are subscription or request monetized. Would I love to use one of them? Yes. Am I going to? No. I have too many subscriptions than I like as is. I know of them and won't use them. The average consumer has no idea they exist.