I’ve Stopped Using Google Search! Why you should consider it too.

[@askleonotenboom]

✅ Watch next ▶ How to Change the Default Search Engine in Microsoft Edge ▶ kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZoncnYNtq8qhgMk

[@maxxsee]

what about qwant and yandex?

[@JasonRule-1]

If you wanted to do a thorough job, you actually needed to compare the quality of the search results, not just the ads.

[@warning_danger]

Also, you know that all the 236 million results are a lie. They changed the paging system to doom-scrolling. Even with ad blocker, it sucks and also spits out propaganda. This is might be part of the reason people believe the dead internet theory.

[@TymexComputing]

7:15 - Duck Duck Go! has been proven to send your private identification data to Bing based on a billateral contract between duckduckgo and mikro$oft - it was suspected years ago and proven recently. And the contract is to be said removed. TBH your own browsers while searching with DDG was sending data to bing :) - not on the backend.

[@laboulesdebleu8335]

Yep, google's utility has been on the decline for about a decade now, only lately it's suddenly a whole lot worse. They had for some reason become less responsive to taking out obvious spam/scam sites which pollute their results. They dropped the advanced search moderators that gave us more focused results. Then they killed off the cache, so we can no longer compare what a site looked like a short time ago compared to now, or see a site w/o endangering our local machine, or see a site that is currently unavailable. We should have taken more notice when they dropped "Don't be evil" as their motto.

[@adamswire9152]

Google started off as a library. Its now a shopping mall.

[@theclearsounds3911]

And a very poor one at that. Try searching for a specific model number of something, even in quotes, and Google will give you unrelated nonsense, won't sort them in any particular order, and won't give you the ones with the best price.

[@atticusherodes6648]

I call it a large favorite links page

[@jimthrowaway]

Google's simply rebranded version of E-YellowPages !

[@soyounoat]

Google is far more than a shopping mall. The company is run by people who seek total control of information, assets and people.

[@valije]

That's literally Amazon.

[@spacecaptain9188]

I'm not so upset about ads at the top as I am about the fake articles and irrelevant search results. I can't find what I"m looking for anymore, even after scrolling past the ads.

[@OurFreeSociety]

It's all about censorship. They control what you think based on what yo learn. You don't learn the Truth unless a Truther like me comes along & starts telling you & you are intelligent enough to want to learn more. Oh, & now it's also about wasting your time & showing you that you are a slave b/c you are & we've always been. Just like this guy said, they are all nice to you in the beginning 7 then their true colors shine through. This was ALL pre-planned.

[@SpaceCadet4Jesus]

Absolutely it's been a problem for the last few years. The worst possible fake articles and irrelevant results on the first page. Who has patience to go to the second, third, or fourth page?

[@rswow]

Ya. Ads? Woopi. Set your search results count to 100, and in a split second you can scroll down to the real results. So, I don't get what Dr. Leo's issue is with the ads, that unlike on KZbin, are easily and rapidly bypassed! The main issue is censorship - the filtering and even cutting out of results to suit Google's biases. And I've got a poetry blog on blogger that I've submitted a few times over the past few years to be included in Google's results, but Google just frustratingly fails to include it!

[@StanleyIfeora]

Yeah, getting what you want is the important thing. Google is a business. Ads are part of business.

[@TheSmark666]

I haven't been annoyed by ads for several years now because I have ublock origin installed. I can't imagine using the Internet without it. Seems the guy who made this video is clearly intelligent just not smart enough to download a simple extension that would alleviate the very issues he complains about. tl;dr - ads? not MY problem lol

[@thepepperlanders]

For over a decade Google was the best search engine by a long shot. Around 2012 they started to suck. I rarely use it anymore.

[@edacheson]

Back in the day, Google ads used to be in the right pane, separate from the main search results on the main page. Now, it's more in your face ads, and you'd have to scrape through multiple ads to find what you're looking for.

[@chocokeeki]

Now they're way shadier about their ads, disguising useless Google Ad-ridden websites as legitimate results related to your search.

[@GlennHamblin]

The thing that I hate most about Google is that they no longer support the search term modifiers like - to exclude a particular term from the results or + to ensure that a term is in the results amoung others. This used to help me zero in on the results i wanted and screen out the things that it insists i must see in my results.

[@BillDavies-ej6ye]

Yes, I also find that frustrating.

[@belstar1128]

yea but for some reason most alternative search engines also don't that was one thing that made me keep using google

[@robertjenkins6132]

They used to have a help page describing all the operators you could use, like they encouraged "advanced usage." I can't believe they removed so much functionality :(

[@friendlyfire7861]

They pretty much ignore everything and show you what they want you to see. Finding anything remotely non-mainstream pol it ically is like pulling teeth.

[@artuselias]

Not sure what you're referring to. All the modifiers still exist.

[@kaseyboles30]

This started the moment google started ignoring explicit search terms. When a term is labeled mandatory (in quotes) or forbidden and 8 out of the top ten non-sponsored results do the opposite, then the search engine is broken. I'm was o.k. with it saying i might get more/better results without the limits, but ignoring them is indeed shitty.

[@Scripture-Man]

Right, Google and the others are no longer search engines and haven't been for a long time. They are some kind of "smart search" thing which gives you biased results based on what's popular, what they think is harmful, and what they do and don't want you to see. It's all part of controlling the masses. The internet started out as a place of free exchange of information, and that was not good for those with secrets. They had to step in and take control. This is as much as I can say.

[@bernardmueller5676]

Well, it started when they banned the PLUS-search term.

[@dankline9162]

You mean the use of boolean search terms? Quotes, and or + (-) even others. I still use them. They don't work?

[@kaseyboles30]

@@dankline9162 They're treated like suggestions "IF it please the crown and not dare overburden nor lower profit perhaps you could kindly consider maybe, just maybe"....... In other words not really. Google is an advertising company that runs an email service and a search engine and few other businesses it can sell adds on, or based on.

[@ThecatThecat-hq1op]

I was confused when I started noticing this behavior. I would get frustrated about search results coming up that still don't do what I want them to since I was looking for something that was unrelated to a more popular main term. Think a song made by a very specific artist, but another more popular person made a song by the same name, now its impossible to find what you're looking for because google refuses to listen to what you're asking it to do.

[@GhostSal]

Another major issue with G is they filter their results to align with their own biases.

[@radiance9657]

Yeep! I tought it was only me that noticed this.

[@numnut1516]

*biases that they believe will serve their bottom line.

[@GhostSal]

@@numnut1516 Or a specific social narrative.

[@Flat_Earth_Addy]

They are CIA.

[@nephetula]

IOW, they're Leftists. That's no surprise!

[@nathanaelculver5308]

Google has become unusable. When I search for the Greek god Nike, I don’t want three pages of tennis shoes. When I search for transformers, I want electrical equipment, not endless ads for toys and movies.

[@ShaneMcGrath.]

You are lucky you got toys and movies for transformers, The way they are these days you might have got men dressed up as women.

[@noracola5285]

​@@ShaneMcGrath. 🥱

[@ziff_1]

Suggestion: stop using standard search and start using AI tools like Perplexity. Get answers without the BS.

[@ebinrock]

You probably need to be more specific now in your search, using quotes like "Greek god Nike" or "power transformers" or "audio transformers", etc.

[@canuck64]

Google is all about $$$$$$$$$$

[@GroovingPict]

I think the bigger issue is that, even speaking purely about the actual search results, Google is now significantly worse than it was, say, ten years ago. I honestly dont mind scrolling twice to get past the ads, as long as the actual search results then are good. Which they just arent anymore. It used to be that you could find absolutely anything with Google. That is far FAR from the case anymore. And THATS the bigger issue in my mind; people dont mind having to move the scroll wheel twice to move past the ads, because thats just the world we've become used to living in at this point. So I think it's a shame you dont touch upon that aspect at all and whether or not other search engines are better when it comes to the actual search results.

[@OurFreeSociety]

You know why they started doing this, right?

[@r.gelmers6580]

@@OurFreeSociety No, not really. Care to enlighten me?

[@kevinoudelet]

But duckduckgo has been condemned for breaking their own privacy policy, collecting, using and reselling data... They're all the same..

[@Steblu74]

Quite a while back I realized that companies were paying money so that they could come up first on your search results… How embarrassing for Google, but how expected for the corporate bottom line. The glaring censorship on any disputed topic is the most embarrassing-

[@terriem3922]

Emphatically Yes

[@mallninja9805]

The weird thing is, I really get ads AFTER I've purchased a thing. Are there that many people suddenly deciding they need to stock up on toilets and refrigerators? How the hell do advertisers have so much money and influence?

[@Lysander-Spooner]

What about StartPage? They claim: A safer way to search and browse online without personal data collection, tracking or targeting. No Search History No Ad Targeting No Digital Footprint

[@sigiligus]

You’re missing the point spectacularly. The ability to find good results is gone. Startpage is just a google proxy. You’re still getting unusable dogshit results, it doesn’t matter if your searches aren’t being tracked and sold by startpage (they’re still being tracked and sold by others)

[@catfaerie]

Thank you for this. I was told about a change to state code that affects me professionally, so I wanted to look it up to understand it better, but no search on any engine I was aware of turned up the appropriate results. One search with StartPage turned up the exact document I needed on the first page. Much appreciated.

[@g-r-a-e-m-e-]

​@@catfaerie oh no!! Actual personal experience!! 😉

[@Casey2262]

​​@@sigiligus So use a privacy focused browser without tracking, fingerprinting, and cookies?... Pretty simple.

[@mallninja9805]

@@Casey2262 Yeah, which one is that?

[@erickborling1302]

Seems like Google search completely ignores boolean search terms, so it's utility is vastly worse than before.

[@ferulebezel]

I don't mind relevant ads when I'm shopping for something. What pisses me off to no end is when I'm served paid fake results that direct me to a vendor based on a single keyword hit. If I search for #8-40 set screws I don't want to see the screw listings from a site named after a certain jungle that contain every screw they have and if they even have what I'm looking for, it's buried. A #8 screw is not an 8mm screw.

[@antoniolewis1016]

I enjoy the reference to Cory Doctorow, and I didn't expect the prim and proper Leo Notenboom to utter the word "Enshittification". It shows how dire the situation is..

[@askleonotenboom]

I'm a programmer. Profanity is a second language. Enshitification is tame. 🙄

[@donalddodson7365]

​@@askleonotenboom I was chatting with a 40-something year old about taking Introduction to FORTRAN in 1973, running the decks of punch cards overnight, then debugging based on the 'greenbar' printouts. By the time he went through the same university 20 years latter, the cards were gone and the debugging was all on screen. GO TO END. 😅

[@antoniolewis1016]

@@askleonotenboom Certainly! I have had my fair share of vividly colorful language troubleshooting my code.

[@stinchjack]

@@antoniolewis1016 Me too, but normally the issue is my own inattention to detail

[@Skobeloff...]

Why isn't there a decent alternative? The current alternatives tend to be very poor.

[@ShadowOfTheSPQR]

the effort to build a search engine is enormous, as seen by the underdogs in the space still not matching the result quality of even a filtered, still enshittified google much of the time.

[@boblossie3192]

A warning about the ad block - AND I STILL INTEND TO KEEP IT..... Since I have that service, when I receive emails that I have interest in reading the article - when I open the email it now tells me I have to cancel the ad block in order to read the article. That has NEVER happened to me before and it happens quite often now. BUT if more of us stand up to the Retailers that pay for the referral, they will stop paying GOOGLE because it's no longer worth the fee they pay.

[@JohnnyFyve-xh8il]

Couple things here... paying for an ad block is usually a backdoor method for data collection, you are teaching what appeals to you and what doesn't...I recommend a multi level protection like BitDefender...Be sure you're reading the EULA and data collection practices... As I'm sure the presenter will agree

[@frederickclause2694]

Any link that wants me to turn off my ad block is just telling me they don't want me to open the link.

[@occamraiser]

but you still expect to benefit from Google's services for free. Seriously some times people astonish me. I use ad blockers because I can, but I'm not self righteous about it AND allow some adds for small companies that I want to help support. And I appreciate the astonishing collection of free products and services I get from Google - I sense no gratitude in your comments.

[@occamraiser]

@@frederickclause2694 no, they are telling you that they are not a publicly funded service and since you're not going to pay you should let them sell you some stuff. Don't be smug or self-righteous about wanting their services and not being willing to pay for them, it doesn't flatter you.

[@JohnnyFyve-xh8il]

@@occamraiser LMFAO 🤣🤣🤣 nailed it!

[@martinschulz9381]

When I read old fashioned magazines I go straight to the ads, but when I'm on the internet I avoid and resist them any way I can. Unfortunately Google or no Google there is just no way to get around internet ads completely. I am just so use to Google that it's hard to change, but I should.

[@Supermanohman]

I hate Bing. I use Edge because my personal and business emails are with MS, and I use 3 computers so it's easy to have them all synced with history and bookmarks. But I hate Bing so much.

[@er...]

You can set another search engine in Edge. You don't need to use Bing in Edge. And it will all still sync.

[@Supermanohman]

@@er... I try all the time. It always finds away to revert

[@er...]

@@Supermanohman that's odd, I've never had it happen in two years of using edge.

[@er...]

@@Supermanohman I get popups that want me to reset to "factory search settings" and/or "safe search," but always deny. You get those?

[@Taffy84]

@@er... I use Microsoft PC Manager app and after it did an update it tried to get me to set the search engine back to Bing from DuckDuckGo.

[@dotpeat1372]

Very informative, small question though. I prefer DDgo, but on my machine it is indicating that privacy is more regulated/depending on your browser, which is firefox on which DDgo runs... Only DDgo on an android alone doesn't function. What I do is religiously clearing cachfiles constantly, reinstalling firefox every three months and reporting hideous ads, website and creating chaos in the 'user' specs of the browser. Knowing when using free one would be ignorant not expecting trickery and manipulation. Great upload!

[@davivify]

Hi, Leo. What I've been hungering for is an intuitive search engine. As you mentioned it has seemed to me that Google used to be more informative and has gotten dumber with time. In any case it, like many search engines, merely does a word search on indexed terms. What I'd like is to be able to pose a question in natural language and have the engine 'understand' my intent and bring up intelligent answers. Or if it doesn't understand my question as originally posed, it might ask clarifying questions, like a librarian might, in order to direct me precisely to where I want to go.

[@ClarenceLewis-yh9hx]

Do any search engine read the question that is being asked? I asked the question "Are there any states in the US that have involuntary euthanasia?" I did not get anything though from the question. I did get quite a few well about thing that I did not ask, right to die, veterinarian, but nothing about my actual question. "Is it all just keywords?"

[@alanramsay9842]

I'm not surprised that Google was tricked by your question. In my world, "involuntary euthanasia" is an oxymoron. By definition, euthanasia is a voluntary, pain-free and orderly act either by the person who died or by someone else with the concurrence of the person who died to end that person's long-term suffering. In any other circumstances, the death was either natural, accidental or the result of murder or manslaughter. To what extent suicide can be conflated with euthanasia is difficult to say but the state of mind of the deceased just prior to death must surely be a determining factor. If the deceased was at peace just prior to death and had carefully planned their demise over a period of many months, I'd call that euthanasia. If the deceased was tormented just prior to death and their death was hurried and brutal, I'd call that suicide.

[@CalvinMcDonald13]

It’s ridiculously hard to fine what you want in KZbin and Google now

[@nyanuwu4209]

It isn't though.

[@Bassotronics]

I could not stop laughing @ 0:54. "enshitification". 🤣

[@pvanukoff]

Google stopped being a search engine a long time ago. It's a sales conversion pipeline.

[@Zulonix]

A year or so before I retired, my boss dropped by (I worked from home) to hand me a Christmas gift. We got into a conversation. In the course of that conversation he mentioned he bought a top-of-the-line office chair from Herman Miller, a company I had never heard of. I should mention that I had Google WiFi as my router. Minutes after my boss left (and without me touching my computer) my son was watching KZbin and chimed up saying an ad popped up for Herman Miller office chairs. It was obvious to me that the router was listening to the conversation. I immediately looked into secure routers ending up buying a Firewalla firewall router and a few Wi-Fi access points. Fortunately, I was able to return the offending Google router to Costco.

[@askleonotenboom]

I don't understand how a router can "listen". Other devices, like your mobile phone, are typically more likely targets.

[@Zulonix]

@@askleonotenboom One can talk to Google WiFi just like you can talk to Amazon Alexa.

[@markanderson2155]

Great topic Leo! Thank you for this and I could not agree more. Sadly and unfortunately this is becoming the way or standard now and I fear it will get worse. Things are so crazy now that if you talk about these topics in disagreement one becomes listed as a hater, also in no small part thanks to the trolls. For me personally I am Not a hater to any of these companies, I just don't like or agree with some things or directions they are doing. It does feel like we are running out of options. Things are so bad that you can not even have an opinion, even some content creators have gone to the point to where they do not want to hear it anymore and say this is the way it is, get used to it. But also to their defense it can be overwhelming as well to which I also understand. I am sure even for you have those moments, you are human after all. Please do not stop giving your honest opinions, advice or theories, well at least for as long as you can. Love your channel, honest opinions and sage advice. Thank you for all you do!

[@jimthrowaway]

I just discovered this channel, intrigued by the video title as it appeared in right sidebar, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.... now I wonder if he's done a similar vid about how we of us who make up the 40% of web households who use vpn's are slowly realizing the actual user-experience ain't what it's cracked up to be, that for something which supposedly hides your tracking data, and even if using cookie and cache cleaner utility apps like ccleaner or privazer etc that somehow these search engines still can identify and target ads based on collected telemetric data. I'm considering abandoning my vpn due to it, it seems like much ado over nothing, mostly a waste of money, and it slows down performance on top of it.

[@gisforgirard]

@@jimthrowaway thats always how it was, the whole VPN thing is just marketing and the way they are using VPNs is not the way they were designed to be used, the term "VPN" today has become literally just a synonym for "proxy server"... it's funny, because most people are unaware of what proxy servers are, but they're using them in the form of VPNs, and they also have no idea what a VPN is actually designed to do, so when I use a VPN to connect to my LAN at home from remotely, people don't understand that I am not just using a proxy server to access content. it's crazy.

[@jimthrowaway]

@@gisforgirard Along with myself, I've a three yr older sibling, a brother, we're both now in early age sixties, whereas he began at IBM in early nineteen-eighties, no not as a bookkeeper or similar _periperhal position_ but indeed right in the core of what the public eye typically perceives that to mean, as an actual hardware technician and then later advancing incrementally, and fortunately for me he mentored me quite a bit early on into what has become now over forty years evolving, so actually yes I am in that segment fairly competently familiar with the point you made about true vpn versus proxy server aspect of it. I personally however don't work in IT, yet most fields and technologies inevitably at some point do upgrade|evolve - it seems _IMHO_ the marketing wizards|gurus in that IT space took _certain creative marketing liberties_ (such as you did correctly point out) in fostering the notion (a.k.a. *"* _embellished !_ *"* ) which implied that _new & improved_ innovations had effectively resulted in VPN's having even more robust privacy capabilities, yet as I said before turns out was much ado over nothing... As well, my original comment was an inquiry about if this channel had any video about or related to remarks/observations in my post, since I appreciated this channel's host's candor and not feeling obligated to _dumb down_ & pretend he didn't notice (a.k.a. *"* _look the other way_ *"* ). Since *KZbin is **_owned by GOOGLE,_* he could easily have chose to speak about any of a million other topics instead, but he went right ahead and spoke his mind, and I _without hesitation_ do give him props for doing that.

[@catsupchutney]

Enshitification should be in the glossary of the CISSP Body of Knowlege

[@trjberg]

My problem with Google search is that it is bad to search at all. 10 years ago or more both Google search and especially the earlier alternatives was much better. In the early days you got better results the more keywords you supplied - not much less or even no results as it is now. (The top ads is actually useful for me, often they are just what I was out for, namely the product I was searching the best price for.)

[@JanPBtest]

startpage displays no ads. It uses Google as the search engine but strips off all personal history (etc.) information and ads.

[@jimjimgl3]

As the saying goes: Why are you getting your knickers all in a twist. First, you can just scroll down past the ads. Secondly, for some, the information / product displayed in the sponsored ad might be relevant. I think many (not all of course) google visitors have learned to deal with the sponsored results.

[@Diwasho]

Even though I did try to move away from google many times I find that the alternatives are just not up to snuff in one way or another. True, they may not be as enshittified as google is now but they still do not give me the results that google does.

[@peterlustig8778]

It's not so much about ads. For me it is about 1. Don't support the evil surveillance empire 2. I don't want woke shit in my life 3. I don't know what the don't show me 4. I don't want to have my data stored in my Gulag file...

[@alvingoodman6539]

Why couldn’t DuckDuckGo shorten their name and just call it …..Quack?

[@googleruinedyoutube4707]

I switched to this username over a decade ago, but now it should be "Google Ruined the Internet."

[@Thurgenev]

Ok, but who dares to use internet in 2024 without an adblocker?

[@mallninja9805]

Almost everyone, apparently.

[@toma5153]

I like how Google cops information from Wikipedia. If you're looking for biographical, technical or geographic information they sort of default to Wiki. Easier to just go straight to Wikipedia

[@JohnnyFyve-xh8il]

Clearing history/cookies is another way of avoiding some of the ad track & traffic, shouldn't it?

[@Andrew-rc3vh]

Firefox has some stealth browsing mode you can set in the privacy options. Clearing cookies can mess things up.

[@greg-v1g6y]

You would think clearing all history search that all the data has been removed but that is not the case.Next time you do it on the same page go to permissions & you will be shocked what you see.You will see websites you have never heard off.You have to remove 1 by 1 & it could take days as it did me.Since i found it i make should i clear my device everyday after use.You are correct about clearing the cookies but they are still there where they send you where they want.

[@knoxduder]

No. There search engine services store your information on their own end. The browser should not be confused with the search engine.

[@ironfist7789]

Browser fingerprinting also

[@damian9303]

I've stumbled across instances where I typed a comment and on an incognito window, typed into the search bar similar wording that'd autocomplete with a section of the comment I typed.

[@smokey11a1]

I don't use Google search any more. Most people I know don't use them either. My family, my friends, my colleagues don't use them. Eventually it's going to affect them.

[@tedwalford7615]

Okay; now I wonder, if AIs like ChatGPT are trained/educated on Web content, wouldn't what they learn by thoroughly biased by the predominance of product marketing, treating real information as of almost no importance, or assuming that marketing claims are facts?

[@joelonsdale]

The internet is bulging at the seams with data and gone are the days when you can just type in a simple search term and expect a decent result. You need to learn to leverage higher search functions and be more specific. It's not rocket science. I do agree that Google et al are corrupted by advertising though.

[@tomsut123]

WHAT DOES KAGI COST???

[@askleonotenboom]

I don't mention price because it can change, but it's also VERY easy to search for it yourself (even using Google :-) ). Here's the page: kagi.com/pricing

[@gjoseph1628]

@@waynea4651 I think so too. It is for people who make very frequent searches and who want NO advertisements.

[@blynkers1411]

Broken fingers? Broken mouse?? Broken caps lock?!

[@gisforgirard]

@@blynkers1411 RULE 31: CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL.

[@phonemail1367]

They continue to take advertising money from CRIMINALS who steal customers money and never send products ordered. They should all be in jail for being complicit with crime! More rampant than ever. Just do a search for a product and FAKE websites show up with the lowest price. This needs to be stopped, they need to be held accountable.

[@Ken.-]

Bing had 11 ads and the first link you said was a traditional link was also an ad. Google literally had fewer ads. lol. And while you're "not sure" if it's an ad, you can click on the three dots next to it to read: This is a search result, not an ad. Only ads are paid, and they'll always be labeled with "Sponsored" or "Ad." Or you can find About these results and see: Google is not compensated for clicks into these results. If it's that troubling to get an ad for a search of a thing you would likely be looking to buy, then just get an ad-blocker. Imaginary problem solved.

[@dhyde9207]

... and yet the first result on your Kagi example is coffee makers at Target.

[@wlmsears]

Google still has the best results for the searches I do. I don't find the sponsored results to be a problem. They are clearly marked as such. In your example, the search results are relevant, and it is easy to scroll down to find the non-sponsored results. Google is still the best (by far) when searching for information that is not product related.

[@himanshuchhabra1942]

Exactly my point. For non product searches, google is still good in my experience(saying after trying duckduck go and brave search ). And I have developed an eye to ignore al sponcered links.

[@emperorarasaka]

There is so much blank space on the right where Google could've easily put the "Definition" and "What people ask" sections

[@braddeicide]

I stopped using it because they want me to prove I'm not a robot constantly and it's slow. I'd rather use bing which is 1000x times faster now.

[@aliannarodriguez1581]

Isn’t it time for a a new company to independently index the web and create its own search engine? Like Google did?

[@askleonotenboom]

There are several already.

[@TopVideoSEO]

Never forget the 21st Century adage: If what you are using (Google) is free, then YOU are the product that is being sold.

[@danthewildbirdman]

The world needs more people like you.

[@barrycopas1671]

Point taken, but uless you searched for that item, you wouldn't see an add for coffee makers, this is really no different to an advert on TV or the radio, someone advertising more widely than the others. Google is crap because it's linked to so many other things that share your info.

[@programmer4life]

Dude, paid search results have been since year 2000. That's 24 years ago. Dafuq you talking about? Yes, the paid search results have modernize during the years, especially the past 5 years, but the fundamentals are still the same.

[@behramcooper3691]

I remember the days when Altavista was the top search engine.

[@Bassotronics]

Thanks! Very informative.

[@crumblingsanity6455]

I have the same sentiments, the google searches have just been cluttered with a bunch of ads and other nonsense and it's very distracting, although I do have to note they did add a new option called "web search" (click on "more" and then it should give you the option) where it just shows you the only the links instead and not all this other stuff. It also doesn't help that google has been adding in "AI searches" now and it doesn't matter whether you have opted in for it or not, they will come up from time to time and that's also pretty annoying as well, so I can see why you just stopped using the search engine.

[@bramharms72]

Paying to have no ads? That doesn't sound safe in these days of sensory overstimulation. Last week I went for a walk in the forest. It wasn't 10 minutes before my brain pulled the old "I'm Not Unconsciously Processing Garbage Information Therefore I Don't Exist" routine and tried to Zero-Sum on me again. Luckily the healthy and inspirational walk in nature had filled me with a deep sense of existential dread which was a hard counter. Left me with a splitting headache though.

[@michaelmartin4383]

If you want none stop advertisements and your computer slowed down to crawl because of all the mass data collection, while paying sky-high prices for broadband, then use Google.

[@chadbertrand1460]

Google allows for complex search arguments, with options such as excluding pages with certain words, finding exact phrases, URL specifics, and domain preference, just to name a few I use often. What's wrong with getting sponsored coffee makers when searching for coffee makers? You got what you asked for, and Google even tells you who paid to be displayed on top. The next 10 "true" search results have no inherent merit, and could have easily manipulated the ranking system using less obvious methods.

[@vidtech2630]

Remember to block advertising , pushing a gendas on this platform !

[@sonnymeadows65]

I don't see the problem in the search results being displayed in a structured order, depending on who has paid to be displayed first, as long as users are informed of this, as they are. There are 2 benefits to the user in doing this. Firstly, monetization is likely to improve the quality of the service (e.g. more user friendly and aesthetically pleasing). Secondly, it ensures that the first results displayed are current, since nobody will pay to advertise products that are no longer available. I'm not connected with Google in any way but have always found Google's seach page simpler and more pleasing to look at than other search pages.

[@bassmaiasa1312]

Enshitification could be a strategy to steer us into using Gemini, where Google gets to pretend to be your friend while constructing a psychological profile your psychiatrist would envy. Classic "Good Cop Bad Cop" maneuver.

[@TheEgg185]

I actually LIKE the ads. 1. If I'm searching for "coffee maker", theres a good chance I'm looking to buy one. 2. Look how EASILY I can compare prices across multiple websites. I would otherwise have to go to each website and search for coffee maker, and set my location, etc. That would take forever. 3. Not interested in ads? Just scroll down a bit. It's really just that easy. I'll take rubbing my scroll wheel 3 times over paying out of pocket for search results. There are many many terrible things that Google is doing, but this isn't one of them.

[@Zodroo_Tint]

Some people just born to be simple.

[@cwistyler3531]

Use an adblock. I use brave with duck duck go. But now that you've pointed it out i will be checking after this video.

[@UncleMort]

Just tried that search on Google and did not get sponsored content. Not sure what you were expecting when typing in "coffee makers" anyway?

[@svonkarmo433]

I have never used G since 2016. I wouldn't have survived this long if I still use it.

[@horacioguillermobrizuela4295]

Thank you so much, Leo. Now I have choices!

[@atticusherodes6648]

I noticed around 2011 as a researcher I had to learn tricks and use 3rd part which where just disguised Google aps

[@pedromarrero]

I've been using duck duck go for last few years. I like it. I have never used Google or Chrome.

[@ncl47]

What’s wrong with adverts? If You don’t like them use unlock origin and then you’re all set! But the whole internet is ad supported. You don’t give any reasons why this is bad though. You just seem to dislike adverts because they take up a bit of space. Better advice would be to use an ad blocker than to try and find a search engine that has fewer adverts on it.

[@afterthesmash]

A reasonable response is to get a huge portrait monitor and set your search to return a large set of results in one page. Then you just have to get used to scrolling past the sponsored crap and other useless sections at the top. A far larger problem for me has been that Google is driving a lot of what used to be the good content off the web. Good writers give up when they don't enough Google juice, because Google is directing the majority of traffic to puppy mills, where you find ... more Google ads.

[@cxa24]

I should be getting more from Google after 25 years

[@sswulffable]

I HAVEN'T use this Non privacy search FOREVER ! Never will -

[@davidberlant5096]

I avoid this problem by using Ad Blocking software. It works great.

[@glr]

"Sponsored" is actually largely ranked, not random, so still useful. But Kagi looks cool.

[@sassora]

Freetube for no youtube ads. Views / information is not tracked

[@avikroparo161]

i don't get ads when i search coffee makes in google search i think something wrong in your browser

[@JabelldiMarco]

The "page" isn't just the part you seen in you small sized window, but the whole page that's leaded in the background and that I'd see if you scrolled down. Everybody knows that this fist part is advertisement, which is also obvious from the name of shops and prices and customer reviews below each picture. In fact, I prefer the ads on top, since I can automatically scroll down a bit and ignore them. (Thus, I can't even tell if ads are following me, because I don't notice them.) I only notices that DuckDuckGo is very slow and seldom finds what I'm looking for, ...maybe because I'm required to repeat the same, correct search term every time?

[@patstevens7159]

Anyone else remember Google's former motto ... "Don't Be Evil"?

[@jeremiahbullfrog9288]

This is exactly what an evil company's motto would be. "I'm not a liar," he lied.

[@georgesos]

Do no evil.

[@gregculverwell]

They got rid of that motto as soon as it went public. Wall Street embraces evil.

[@occamraiser]

You think that selling advertising is EVIL? Your life must be a bed of roses if a mere advert is the act of some form of demon.

[@stevebabiak6997]

@@occamraiser - it’s not just the advertising. Google has a bias in the process of ranking search results.

[@-Tris-]

Search something: "100.000.000 results" scroll down and you see 30 pages 🤔 click trough the pages and it stops at page 12 "no more results" 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

[@AndrewBuckleBookReviews]

Yes, love that one ... the answer you want is probably on page 13 or 14 but that is never shown. Not sure why they bother putting out a ridiculous figure like 100 million if they are not going to show them

[@Zodroo_Tint]

@@AndrewBuckleBookReviews It depend on the answer. If it is against the current political narrative you never gonna find it.

[@OurFreeSociety]

That's b/c they are censoring all the sites they don't want you to read & while some are garbage, many are Truther sites like mind. Do you know how long they have been hiding real sites from you?

[@akshay5295]

And I don’t get this argument against default browsers and search engines. What are they supposed to do ? Make a competitor as the default ? Just not have a default option? What’s wrong with have your option as the default ? It just seems like the most natural thing anyone. Even you or me would do if we had our company. There is no better alternative to it.

[@patricksweeney6334]

"Search something: "100.000.000 results"" I'm not sure if it's still the case, but I recall having learned (several years ago) that Google will only show 1,000 actual results. More restrictive search terms can help to focus those 1000... or used to. But I totally agree with the "enshitification" term for what they've turned into. lol

[@tedwalford7615]

My gripe: Searches all return something for sale, not information. I almost never would go to Google to shop, but Google treats all searches as shopping. Say I want to learn about the life of an author; I get book ads. Say I want to learn about the history of a country; I get travel ads. Say I want to learn about the financials of a business; I get only ads for their products. Say I'm I student researching latest energy storage technologies; I get ads for batteries and "solar generators." And even where paid ads aren't returned, the searches still first and primarily return links for buying instead of informing. I'm not a shopper, dammit! I just need information.

[@jimthrowaway]

what's so awful to me about the *100% truth of ur comment* is that, for someone who does extensive online research as part of one's occupation, back in the day .edu, as one example among similar types of domain suffixes, were considered more academic results, more likely text and data oriented, with more relevance, for searching the types of examples you cited. Now, those types of domains appear randomly usually after tediously scrolling down into & digging thru the lower tiers of results, effectively relegated practically into obscurity. It's the dirty little secret. Google is now targeting by age-based criteria on the assumption that users below a certain age make up the majority of their targeted user-base and therefor are unaware of how Google search results used to be and what actual useful results should resemble, since they weren't around to see them firsthand. That's the dirty little secret. And they get away with it because they've brainwashed millennials not to trust or believe anyone over age thirty. Sad but true...no joke.

[@mmingle57]

You are 100% CORRECT! Google is a big bunch of corrupt bullshit ADS! Google is all about MONEY GREED and SELFISHNESS!!! Google pages and pages and pages of CRAP 💩!!! You can’t use google for research information!!! WHAT A CORRUPT WORLD we live in today!!

[@murraymadness4674]

Exactly right, and it now does not even find anything you need if you are really persistent to get to page 20. It says millions of results, and you get 10 bad results and 100 ads. I suppose their used to be forums and it would find all the discussions in them that had useful info, it does not seem to do that anymore and forums are less used, but they are still used and google doesn't show them.

[@jimthrowaway]

@@murraymadness4674 Ads not just on search results pages only. There's Google Ads loading into sidebars at email apps, headers & footers on blogs, they follow us...

[@matts.9330]

If you are looking for information on something just add the word 'Reddit' to the end of your search query. Reddit has become the biggest repository of information now. And Google search works great to find the information you are looking for if you know how to use it.

[@A3Kr0n]

I'm more concerned with what they don't want to show you than what they do show you. That's another topic.

[@realtruth529]

right on ! as a person who research much on geopolitcs for years can say its now very worring what the hide and what the push forward. has nothing to do with truth and helping people find things to learn and get wiser. Brave !

[@OurFreeSociety]

Oh good, someone who's awake for a change. Hi

[@robertedson2374]

EXACTLY!!!! BS video!!

[@DragoNate]

@@robertedson2374 how is the video bs?

[@NemoOhd20]

Freespoke has a decent search engine. And news page for that matter.

[@JacquesSteffen]

My Google search results have become so bad that the top line of "sponsored" results consists of 99% Temu products. 🤬

[@madelainepetrin1430]

Temu must be paying big bucks. They're everywhere. Which tells me it's crap. 😂😅

[@shirleyb2896]

Duck Duck Go does the same. Temu & Amazon.

[@auricia201]

Omg I HATE Temu, even more than Shein. And yes, I came here just to leave hate ✌🏻

[@Oatmeal-Savage]

@@madelainepetrin1430 Temu is definitely crap. Cheap, Chinese crap at its most prolific.

[@chocokeeki]

I hate Temu so much. It's like the logical conclusion of all the crap Google et al. are doing.

[@Nicksonian]

Duck Duck Go isn’t all that good. Searching on a product term is a bad example. Trying to find information on a specific topic is getting to be impossible. The search engines give you something like what you’re seeking, but based on something more popular that might, but more likely isn’t what you want. Duck is as guilty of not answering a specific question as Google.

[@williamtopping]

It's leagues ahead of the ADHD advert riddled shit wank that is google.

[@KevinJDildonik]

DDG was repeatedly caught leaking user information. I no longer trust them.

[@Scripture-Man]

@@KevinJDildonik Quite right. DDG are just as rotten as all the others. They lie. They spy on users. They are all a big gang of buddies who work together against the public for their own purposes. True search engines are now extremely rare - ones which actually return pages containing the TERM you searched for without discrimination. All the others return what THEY want you to see, and censor what they don't, based on secret "algorithms". It's all about controlling the public.

[@a64738]

Duck Duck Go give 99,999% the same spam results as google and any other "search engine"... Only search engine I know of that is still functional is yandex.

[@LouiseBrooksBob]

DuckDuckGo is as far as I know, a search engine aggregator so it's only as good as the search engines it uses.

[@FriedAudio]

I stopped using G search because it no longer likes my VPN. I am NOT going to identify traffic lights, crosswalks, buses, or motorcycles EVERY time I want to perform a simple search. DDG and StartPage are preferred.

[@robertjenkins6132]

The worst is when a tiny, tiny piece of the motorcycle is in another square, so you're not sure if you're supposed to click the square or just ignore it because it's only a few pixels of motorcycle.

[@robertjenkins6132]

Also: Do the poles count as part of the traffic light? Or only the actual light contraption at the end of the pole?

[@OurFreeSociety]

DDG censors the Truth as well & I thought Start Page has goolag's back end. It ALL goes into a pool of data that they use to track your every move & thought. There's a file on you, did you know that? There are no good SEs. I have a whole list.

[@dot1298]

what about Brave Search, Qwant, Ecosia and meta-search engines?

[@SpaceCadet4Jesus]

The solution is stop going to those "special" websites via VPN. We know where you're going, and that you're browsing the internet one-handed. 😂😉

[@ToniCorvera]

The problem is far worse than the sponsored positions. Once you reach the "actual" results, particularly for something like the coffee maker example, they are filled with SEO-optimised bot-generated review sites, link farms and other empty husks of websites. Stuff that Google used to fight via their algorithm but that, as an article that has made the rounds recently pointed out, no longer does *on purpose* since that means you'll spend more time browsing through their results (and being fed their ads) while trying to find the actual content.

[@Vamooso]

They also include 'similar words' in your search terms, making it harder and harder to find specific things (but easier to server you wider and more amounts of ads)

[@robertjenkins6132]

Yeah the thing he is complaining about in the video (at least at the beginning; I haven't watched the whole thing yet) doesn't even affect me because I have adblock. But the garbage search results affect me.

[@OurFreeSociety]

They purposely want you to go around in circles to waste your time. It's one of the evils' weapons, keep the slaves busy so they don't figure out what the Truth is & fight back. The evils control the entire net (always have) & that includes nzi goolag. Reddit, FB, TW, IG, whatever, you tell me & I'll tell you if I think they are owned & are brainwashing you.

[@wayne9518]

I dropped bing almost as soon as it became available. I don’t know if it’s gotten any better but I could go through 6-10 or more pages and not find anything close to what I was looking for. Google would have it on the first to third page.

[@skulver]

Indeed. I could put up with the ads, they were easy enough to filter out, but when the actual search results just link to mass generated garbage websites that exist for no more reason than to make money cramming as many google ads as possible on the site there was no point anymore.

[@pipe2devnull]

Enshitification is a great term coined by Corey Doctorow.

[@InterCity134]

Now if we can just get Paul Thurott to stop saying “in-shirt-ification” 😂

[@nevertoolate5325]

Nice one. Credit where its due 👍

[@ivok9846]

i think his thesis never materialized: he uses fb and amazon as examples, but they're not dead, they making big money. so.....not really, it's just a dream doctor corey had...

[@derosa1989]

@@ivok9846 I'm not sure Doctorow claims the companies that use Enshitification die, can anyone confirm that? What i've read has him warning of 3 stages, not 4, and that the consumer ends up with enshittified capitalism with monopolies.

[@miltown3920]

@@ivok9846i think your capable of seeing the bigger picture here.. hopefully

[@dave24-73]

Google search has become advert ridden with very little content matches. As usual greed kills a good product.

[@DasHemdchen]

There‘s another problem with Google. Result pages are a cluttered mess of irrelevant information. The more time you spend on a search result frantically reading and scrolling to find that tiny piece of needle in the haystack, Google ranks the page up for the next user. It would be more appropriate to rank pages based on clarity, not on longevity.

[@zorromagico4534]

we need to develop a bot that enters to a fucked up site like these using irrelevant stuff and make backtracking google will mark that page as Bs

[@davesmith8101]

Google is about money, power and advertising. Google dominate every single aspect of the internet. One recent development is the removal of the add blocker facility from the Chrome browser, and even browsers not based on Chrome such as Firefox. They can and do change internet standards to suit themselves and their aims only. I despise Google.

[@c99kfm]

You're talking about the switch Chrome and other Webkit-based browsers is making to Manifest V3. Firefox is adding support for Manifest V3, but is maintaining support for Manifest V2 - so your adblocks will keep working there.

[@davesmith8101]

@@c99kfm thank you for that, I didn’t know Firefox was adding support for manifest V3. Much appreciated

[@c99kfm]

Correction since it's (for me) late on a Friday (almost midnight): Chrome doesn't use Webkit, it uses a custom fork of Webkit they call Blink. I still think of it as "Webkit-based", but I really should be specific about these things...

[@sathivv950]

Ad blocking still works for me using chrome with uBlock origin. You just need to occasionally refresh uBlocks list. In addition I recommend you set up a DNS ad blocker on your network like Pi-Hole. I haven't seen an ad in over 10 years. I don't even see KZbin ads.

[@OurFreeSociety]

You are half right. It's not about money or advertising, it's about CONTROL & brainwashing. You know that your thoughts, opinions & ideas are all based on what you learn, right? What better power then to teach you the lies the evils spread so you are in the dark about what's going on. goolag censors everything that is the Truth, including on this terrible platform. They destroyed thousands of Truther's channels at the beginning of the war. They are still deleting my videos one at a time whenever their evil AI finds one & I get an email. I stoped uploading vids in April 2021. Now you can't even put links in a pinned comment if you weren't a good little slave for YT. You do know we are in WWIII and the internet is the way they brainwashed & fear porned billions about the lies back in March 2020? I hated goolag years earlier even before I was awake. They ruined my business. I was on page one for very niche kws & I lost everything in 2012 after an algorithm update & that's when their SE went down the hill & I was shock no one noticed. I can't stand goolag worshipers. Many people went bankrupt b/c of them & they pushed all of these dead sites to page 1 so it was garbage results. Then they removed my video from my channel with some BS lie. Then when the war started I started to learn that if you compared the results from goolag & another SE, you would see how they were controlling what results you see and all of those sites were lies. Billions took the death jab b/c of what they showed you on page one. This was all pre-planned. None of this is shocking. The evils control the entire internet & always have. It's ALL about brainwashing what you think & playing you like a puppet. The money is just gravy, but not their main goal. Do you know why they gave the internet to us?

[@1crustyoldmsgtretired870]

I'm old enough to remember the internet before google became a verb. It was a bit like the wild west, but at least you weren't constantly forced to look at ads. Also, search results were based on popularity, not what the advertiser paid in.

[@JustIn-mu3nl]

Same I remember when google was niche, big mamma or something like that was a bigger search engine at the time.

[@TheSimoc]

Yes and most importantly, results weren't based merely on popularity, but also on the search words, and even the verbatim phrase, with inclusions, exclusions, and other logic. Now, it doesn't have the verbatim search anymore, instead automatically ignoring some of the words arbitrarily, and omitting any logic.

[@TheSimoc]

​@@JustIn-mu3nlYep, and furthermore, it was also blazingly fast, sleek, lightweight, and clear and tidy. Now, it is a monster of code bloat, with horrible UI with everything beyond simple word search hidden in endless landfill of million different option pages without any consistency, any logical outlinings, and with tonnes of clutter, everything styled differently and redundancy making about half of the total items.

[@gorak9000]

And there were multiple search engines that were decent, and actually found what you were looking for. And you could use dogpile to search all of the top engines at once

[@rabiatorthegreat6163]

@@JustIn-mu3nl Altavista was the big one. It would spit out lots of irrelevant crap along with useful search results, but without intentional bias. It was just a slog to find the nuggets among the trash. Then Google came around and made it much easier to find relevant results, but for very specific searches I still preferred Altavista. Until it was swallowed by Yahoo.

[@robertcabuto3284]

I have noticed that when going to another page, about half of the results were also on the previous page. That continues as you go forward and after seeing the same results over and over, you begin to doubt if you really clicked to go to the next page.

[@shaunpatrick8345]

It also censors results.

[@TheSimoc]

And comments!

[@somedude5951]

Surprising to find a comment on that subject here!

[@artuselias]

But they show transparency notes, which other search engines don't.

[@shaunpatrick8345]

@@artuselias they de-rank and unindex sites they don't like. Transparency notes are for when results have been excluded because of court orders.

[@maccagrabme]

massively

[@Starry_Night_Sky7455]

I just have to use this enshitification term. Cars for example have become enshitified by excessive software, screen $hit, and more $hit.

[@wherezthebeef]

Indeed.. it's why I drive an old 5 speed VW with single overhead cam engine with not gps or any other tech distractions

[@Tammy-mp6gk]

😆

[@lanatrzczka]

Boy did you get the sponsorship cost wrong... Google actually runs it like an auction, where highest bidder (per month) gets first listing. If your company has a commonly searched-for product, just to be the top listing in your COUNTY can easily run $5k per month (and you can still be outbid, even by a competitor in another county). I can't even imagine the monthly bidding for statewide or national. Oh, I forgot to mention one thing. Competitors can bid more and get first listing EVEN IF SOMEONE DIRECTLY SEARCHES FOR YOUR COMPANY NAME. It's basically advertising extortion.

[@c99kfm]

Step 3, "finally, they abuse their business customers".

[@OurFreeSociety]

Yeh when he said 5 cents I said he has no idea what he's talking about, especially since he doesn't know they are called PPC, although that term may have changed over the years. goolag is evil, that's the bottom line & we have no good SEs at all. I just went to Yahoo & they forced me to have Spanish even though I want English b/c I'm in Mx. All of the sites are doing this now. Do you know why?

[@AnatolyBerezkin]

Even worse. If there are not enough searches and clicks for your selected keywords, to spend advertising budget, google shows the web site to users, searching for "similar" (as they wrongly believe), but non-relevant keywords, and then, when users rapidly close your web site, it drops in relevance for google algorithm. And finally it appears, that you pay to make your website less relevant for an algorithm, and push it down in organic search. They have also very strange ideas about what the product should look like. It has to have known shipping costs, known lead time etc. i have large customised products, which have different shipping costs for different countries, also lead time and price may vary, but who cares about reality? Tried google adverts 4 years ago. Will newer do it again.

[@paulmitchell5349]

In Google I often say to myself .. That's NOT what I asked for !! ''

[@dankline9162]

The same thing has happened to ebay. Used to be much easier to search for what you wanted, had fantastic filter system. Now it gives you the illusion of helping, givng you choices of preset categories instead

[@OurFreeSociety]

When did this start with ebay who you know is now removing tons of people's accounts for no reason at all, right?

[@dankline9162]

@@OurFreeSociety Well I was talking about ebay motors, but the filter problem affects all categories. Slowly been getting worse, but around the time they started advertizing for new parts, instead of used. Preferential for big sellers instead of an equal marketplace. For example, I think they got rid of the fuel type filter for motors, and some others. Also I had a long standing bug where I couldn't search by distance bc it refused to change my default location from some place in California to my zip.

[@jer1776]

I noticed.. I wanted to buy an OEM used trunk mat for my car because I spilled oil on mine and every single result is a sponsored, brand new aftermarket one..

[@SEEYAIAYE]

I gave up on ebay after the last 5 items that were supposedly from my country all came from china weeks later, they evidently don't care about the millions of fraudulent chinese sellers so I don't care to use it any more.

[@Patrick-857]

Yep. I can't get actual information out of Google anymore. I search for some fairly niche technical stuff, and all I get is Aliexpress ads. When I'm trying to find the specifications of an old model Japanese Fender Stratocaster, or need to find a bulb holder for a Ssanyong Rexton high mount stop light, it's extremely annoying. All I get is ads. It takes hours to finally get what I'm after.

[@NoName-ik2du]

The problem is that no matter what you do, you still get ads disguised as regular results because so many sites out there are "search engine optimized". I'm so tired of result after result being the same cut-and-paste article that ends by segueing into whatever product that particular website is trying to sell. Finding genuine results sometimes feels completely impossible.

[@aliannarodriguez1581]

It’s enough to send you back to printed books.