[azangru]

> now that Google isn’t really Google anymore

I can't say I've noticed any changes about google search on desktop recently. Yes; there is an AI overview widget at the top of the page; but it's been there for at least a year.

Has anything changed about Google search results for you?

[cromka]

It did for me, I can no longer find any GitHub project. Duck duck returns them on first try. Absolutely ridiculous, couldn't believe my eyes when I finally realized that. I get a ton of ads and product placements on first couple pages. What I search for is literally, word for word, name of the repository and it's not ambiguous.

[thenthenthen]

Thats interesting, because for me, I cant find anything on github, through github search and need to resort to google. Google search is super super terrible for other things tho :/

[cromka]

Possibly, but try this yourself to see how irritating Google can be:

https://www.google.com/search?q=marine+nav+compass+card

vs

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=marine+nav+compass+card

[amazingamazing]

Im curious, what is your query?

[cromka]

https://www.google.com/search?q=marine+nav+compass+card

vs

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=marine+nav+compass+card

[veber-alex]

Huh? the github page of pretty much anything is always in the top 5 results for me.

[cromka]

https://www.google.com/search?q=marine+nav+compass+card

vs

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=marine+nav+compass+card

It's all products and ads now with Google with anything vague enough that warrants up-selling for them.

[FractalParadigm]

And honestly, that's my biggest gripe. Identical search terms on different systems, or even the same system in different physical locations, almost always return different results from one-another. Telling someone to "Google it" stopped being a reliable way to share information.

[rplnt]

Yes, significantly, but not recently. It can't search anymore. Like literally, it can't. You cannot reach a web page you know exists, like you used to.

[retsibsi]

Depends what you mean by 'recently', but for me they are much worse than they were several years ago. There was a period when people were complaining and I didn't really see why, but eventually whatever it was caught up with me too. I think it's a combination of losing the battle with SEO spam and prioritising things other than giving me what I actually ask for. There's lots of obvious junk (either 'AI slop' in the truest sense, or the human-written version that was common pre-AI) that finds its way to or near the top of the results; also, it can be difficult and frustrating to convince Google that I'm actually looking for X rather than the superficially similar and more popular Y, and that I would prefer a small number of actually-relevant results to a million irrelevant or sloppy ones.