Why I’ve Stopped Using Google Search
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- čas přidán 25. 06. 2024
- ☝️ Google search used to be the winner by far, but recent decreases in its trustworthiness and the improved offerings of other search engines make switching a pragmatic choice.
☝️ Google search on the decline
Google Search’s declining quality and annoying ads have led to what many call its “enshitification.” It’s caused me to explore alternatives like Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Kagi, which offer better privacy, fewer ads, and in some cases, completely ad-free experiences.
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Chapters
0:00 Stopped Using Google Search
0:55 “Enshitification”
1:30 See Google search at work
4:00 Google is an ad delivery company
4:25 Alternatives
4:30 Bing
6:40 DuckDuckGo
8:20 Kagi
10:05 Other search engines
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what about qwant and yandex?
If you wanted to do a thorough job, you actually needed to compare the quality of the search results, not just the ads.
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.
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.
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.
Google started off as a library. Its now a shopping mall.
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.
I call it a large favorite links page
Google's simply rebranded version of E-YellowPages !
Google is far more than a shopping mall. The company is run by people who seek total control of information, assets and people.
That's literally Amazon.
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.
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.
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?
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 CZcams, 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!
Yeah, getting what you want is the important thing. Google is a business. Ads are part of business.
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
Anyone else remember Google's former motto ... "Don't Be Evil"?
This is exactly what an evil company's motto would be. "I'm not a liar," he lied.
Do no evil.
They got rid of that motto as soon as it went public.
Wall Street embraces evil.
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.
@@occamraiser - it’s not just the advertising. Google has a bias in the process of ranking search results.
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.
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.
Well, it started when they banned the PLUS-search term.
You mean the use of boolean search terms? Quotes, and or + (-) even others. I still use them. They don't work?
@@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.
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.
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.
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.
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!!
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.
@@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...
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.
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" 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
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
@@AndrewBuckleBookReviews It depend on the answer. If it is against the current political narrative you never gonna find it.
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?
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.
"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
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.
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.
@@ShaneMcGrath. 🥱
Suggestion: stop using standard search and start using AI tools like Perplexity. Get answers without the BS.
You probably need to be more specific now in your search, using quotes like "Greek god Nike" or "power transformers" or "audio transformers", etc.
Google is all about $$$$$$$$$$
Another major issue with G is they filter their results to align with their own biases.
Yeep! I tought it was only me that noticed this.
*biases that they believe will serve their bottom line.
@@numnut1516 Or a specific social narrative.
They are CIA.
IOW, they're Leftists. That's no surprise!
I'm more concerned with what they don't want to show you than what they do show you. That's another topic.
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 !
Oh good, someone who's awake for a change. Hi
EXACTLY!!!! BS video!!
@@robertedson2374 how is the video bs?
Freespoke has a decent search engine.
And news page for that matter.
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.
It's leagues ahead of the ADHD advert riddled shit wank that is google.
DDG was repeatedly caught leaking user information. I no longer trust them.
@@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.
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.
DuckDuckGo is as far as I know, a search engine aggregator so it's only as good as the search engines it uses.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Enshitification is a great term coined by Corey Doctorow.
Now if we can just get Paul Thurott to stop saying “in-shirt-ification” 😂
Nice one. Credit where its due 👍
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...
@@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.
@@ivok9846i think your capable of seeing the bigger picture here.. hopefully
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.
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.
Also: Do the poles count as part of the traffic light? Or only the actual light contraption at the end of the pole?
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.
what about Brave Search, Qwant, Ecosia and meta-search engines?
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. 😂😉
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.
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.
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
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.
Yes, I also find that frustrating.
yea but for some reason most alternative search engines also don't that was one thing that made me keep using google
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 :(
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.
Not sure what you're referring to. All the modifiers still exist.
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.
Step 3, "finally, they abuse their business customers".
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Same I remember when google was niche, big mamma or something like that was a bigger search engine at the time.
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.
@@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.
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
@@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.
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.
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.
@@c99kfm thank you for that, I didn’t know Firefox was adding support for manifest V3. Much appreciated
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...
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 CZcams ads.
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?
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.
It’s enough to send you back to printed books.
Google search has become advert ridden with very little content matches. As usual greed kills a good product.
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
When did this start with ebay who you know is now removing tons of people's accounts for no reason at all, right?
@@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.
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..
I don't like google search anymore because it assumes that it knows what you want to search for better than you do. So rather than giving me the results I really want, it gives me results that they want.
I once searched for baby products because I wanted to buy a present for a newborn baby. But I am a single man with no kids. It frustrated me that I got a lot of ads about baby products after that. I don't want to see nappy pants everyday.
I once searched for homes for elderly people because an elderly woman asked it at me. Then I got advertisements with all things for aged people.
But I have found a solution!
I searched for 'ladies underwear, bra's' and so on. Now all ad placeholders are filled with scarcely dressed beautiful women. From time to time you must click on them to keep them coming, but I can live with that.
Yes, I use an adblocker too, but not on websites that I support.
It also censors results.
And comments!
Surprising to find a comment on that subject here!
But they show transparency notes, which other search engines don't.
@@artuselias they de-rank and unindex sites they don't like. Transparency notes are for when results have been excluded because of court orders.
massively
I started using a free Ad Blocker several years ago. I no longer see similar Ad listings when doing a Google Search. I'm honestly not sure why many don't use Ad Blockers in the current markets.
People just don't know,i been using one for over 10 years.
What one do you use? I use ABPlus, just tried 'coffee makers' and the first row is adverts.
Firefox and ublock origins
My Google search results have become so bad that the top line of "sponsored" results consists of 99% Temu products. 🤬
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.
You know why they started doing this, right?
@@OurFreeSociety No, not really. Care to enlighten me?
Because the ads get fairly pricey, the easy way to break this is for all of us to click on the ads. Make the ads so damned expensive (and useless) that vendors stop paying for the worthless ad spots.
Make it an automated background process, like Adnausium on steroids.
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-
Emphatically Yes
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?
I was looking for local equipment hire companies. I am not sure what major search engine I was using. Some hire companies did not show in the results. I finally relied on my memory. A few days later I heard an ad on the radio for an equipment hire company I had forgotten. So, make notes, use the phone book or try another search engine.
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.
Not only ads, but also SEO and unlinkable pages (i.e. social media posts) renders search engines hard to use.
It’s a shame that there is no good enough alternative.
I can't even find what im looking for with long tail keywords anymore. Google is horrible these days
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
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)
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.
@@catfaerie oh no!! Actual personal experience!! 😉
@@sigiligus So use a privacy focused browser without tracking, fingerprinting, and cookies?... Pretty simple.
@@Casey2262 Yeah, which one is that?
Kagi makes a LOT of sense. I like the saying, if you're not paying for a service, "you" are the "product". Pay for your search engine, you get a service more taylored to your needs, because the company you're buying it from has quite a lot of incentive to give you the service you want. $5 for 300 searches per month seems like a lot; $10 for unlimited seems a lot better. The question becomes, is this going to be enough to keep this company afloat? I don't think so, in that with so many alternatives without a fee, I don't think enough folks will see enough value in it to pony up the money.
There are tons of paid email services for this reason. They're doing fine.
What alternatives? Serious question because the other search engines I've used give me similar search results and pretty much the same issues and quality of search results.
Sure, until they discover they can double-dip. Then they charge you AND deliver ads.
It's funny, because I remember back then all the tech news was recommending google because they didn't charge for result priority. At least the older search engines mostly were transparent about how much they charged, literally in small text next to the search result title. And they were all legitimate page results. not shopping links
Great Video. My personal translation : Google previously a search engine morphed into Google E-Yellow Pages, -and, for posterity, includes an assortment of search results at no extra charge.
I used to search for best loudspeaker manufacturers and get results from articles with honest views. Now I get endless manufacturer's advertisements.
enshitification is a very technical term and a widely used technique by big business. Like planned obsolescence, its a feature, not a bug
One of my pet peeves with prior behaviors is when you accidentally click on something then they keep pestering you. Even though you keep clicking on that "X" you still get them, well because, clicking on that "X" means you saw it and interacted with it. Sounds like SPAM to me. Perhaps AI SPAM shouldn't that be illegal?
Altavista was a way better search engine than Google, you just had to spend a couple of minutes to learn how to use it's features. Those features were so good that Google stole them in the late 2000s.
you saying "Enshitification" in such a calm voice is the funniest thing i've heard all week.
I've been seeing it so much lately it's just become an everyday part of my lexicon.
@@askleonotenboom BTW, it has two Ts: Enshittification, not enshitification, unless you use the British "shite" instead of "shit".
Noticed this awhile back. That, I was seemingly looking and looking 3-4 pages in for the “leading results “. Getting past advertisements marketing and whatever else. Seemed strange.
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..
I'm a programmer. Profanity is a second language. Enshitification is tame. 🙄
@@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. 😅
@@askleonotenboom Certainly! I have had my fair share of vividly colorful language troubleshooting my code.
@@antoniolewis1016 Me too, but normally the issue is my own inattention to detail
The problem with corporate greed.
In Google I often say to myself .. That's NOT what I asked for !! ''
He stopped using Google Search but used Google Adsense to profit from his CZcams channel. Weird.
FYI At one point you used the term "browser" instead of "search engine" when you meant search engine. Love your videos!
i can look straight to the actual results, and the actual results have also become much worse than they used to be. the ads might have influenced the web rankings enough to ruin the search, or they may still be running ads in the actual resuts. the result is the same no matter what search engine i use
The problem with the garbage results nowadays is primarily from SEO abuse. Companies (and grifters) have gotten good at 'gaming' the system, and getting their trashy, spammy results up higher.
That is a point. I can skip first page with adds and questions, but I have problems with what is coming next as well.
@@Jeff-66 The other problem is Google actively changes your search terms to include 'similar terms and results', which can be used to serve you even more ads
When did this start for you?
Agree. Google search is terrible. It's only good at searching images in the image tab for its many customizable options such as Small, medium, Large size, format, time etc and Google translate. They also favour Reddit and Quora which is terrible as well. As well as all those web sites which claim to offer troubleshooting tips that are in my opinion completely useless.
Agree with trying perplexity. Very different way it supplies results. Not quite as good for product searches but much better when looking for info as it gives you a summarised answer rather than just link to a site with an answer.
You do have to be careful because it can give wrong answers in a very confident sounding way. And then give the opposite answer next search. Also it summarizes results (wow, I actually had to stop and think of the word, all that was coming was "summarizes ads", lol...) so sometimes it will even just tell you, the search results aren't enough to answer
Thanks Leo, results of search on Google look obvious, yet you have done research with demonstrated conclusions, for what I am thankful. Please continue.
Google's push to advertise is only one of its problems. The other of its problems is shared by DDG, which is that it has become political/corporate. Searching any topic that is even vaguely political will get you the politically correct/corporate approved results, not the most relevant ones.
Interesting, I've noticed the same but did not connect it. Thanks. As a side note, consider a Mocamaster coffee brewer. I got one and it's just amazing.
I'm googling ❌
I'm edging 🗿
Hi Leo, thank you so much for this extremely informative and helpful post. It made me realise that I’ve been slowly dragged into a mire of advertising without realising it. I’ve noticed for some time that Google presents me with ever-fewer useful search results but never understood why or what I could do about it. I now know, thank you. I’ve used DDG in the past but abandoned it when my old iPad wouldn’t work with it and although I still have it’s app and a new iPad Pro, I’ll look into your other suggestions starting with Kagi. Thanks again for such an informative post.
I'd already intuited most of what you raised here (and was already doing/using a few of the tips) but also gleaned a couple of useful tidbits. Excellent video!
There is considerable conversation -- first with conservatives, now with liberals -- that Google is either 1) so much in love with certain political stances that they make sure that is what is shown in their searches, or 2) They're infiltrated by gov't forces to enforce political objectives (ie, the COVID stuff). This isn't just about "accurate search results" -- this is about the original "free speech" concept that we all fell in love with back with CompuServe / AOL / Internet NNTP days. Do you value FREE SPEECH or do you think that certain topics should be "rigged"?
Unfortunately if a major search engine doesn't rig the results of a popular search, it will likely be rigged by third parties using SEO techniques, and on political topics their motives will be substantially worse than those of the search provider. I'm not going to insist that Google is doing a good job or anything, but it is not easy.
I think it is mostly about Google wanting to please its advertisers and presenting their stuff in a "family friendly" context. Which does not so much apply to Google Search, but on CZcams it is quite blatant. On top of that, I think there is some wokeism but it is not the main driving force.
Google only cares about its profits. Notice that Exxon Mobile only cares about its profits. And your grocery store, and your fast food.. And so does your government,it only cares about making sure its donors make profits. don't confuse anything else with this.
Do you trust that any private profit-driven company is gonna care about free speech? They're going to prioritize whatever speech lets them sell ads.
I'm sick of Google cramming it's political agenda down my search results, well said. Barely use Google these days.
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.
You can set another search engine in Edge. You don't need to use Bing in Edge. And it will all still sync.
@@er... I try all the time. It always finds away to revert
@@Vicvines that's odd, I've never had it happen in two years of using edge.
@@Vicvines I get popups that want me to reset to "factory search settings" and/or "safe search," but always deny. You get those?
@@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.
You must also realize that search engines only stay superior for as long as they have the most users who click the most relevant results. The same is true for any user generated platform, like CZcams. When enough people switch to other search engines, their searches fail more often.
Thanks! Very informative.
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.
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
Any link that wants me to turn off my ad block is just telling me they don't want me to open the link.
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.
@@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.
@@occamraiser LMFAO 🤣🤣🤣 nailed it!
Ok, but who dares to use internet in 2024 without an adblocker?
Almost everyone, apparently.
Another huge consideration -- Google has, what, 70% of the online ad business? Do you expect that the web pages using Google Ads is gonna also use competitors? Not just biased search results, but they also choke off competition for ad spaces.
Thanks Leo. I have been used Duck for as long as I can remember. It gets rid of the search info when you close the browser.
stopped years ago, what a waste.
What do you use now?
@@stevenrosscarpenter duckduckgo.
Very interesting vid. Now that you point it out, I have noticed that Google is showing more and more sponsored stuff, and I have to scroll way down to get the answers I as looking for. Thanks.
The world needs more people like you.
I remember around 15 years ago Google would give the CORRECT answer but not anymore to the following question: Who did 9/11? It took me to a website listing all the unconventional culprits.
A question. Kagi says: "No ads, fast and personalised results. The search engine you deserve." Then later on: "100% free of ads and tracking."
How do they personalise the search without tracking? I think they used a wrong wording, should have used 'search relevant' or something.
use a free ad blocker
@@user-up3hf9yk3v I do. That didn't answer my question.
You can block websites or adjust their ranking on future searches. Kagi's help page has a list of features.
Excellent! Thank you very much 🙂🇺🇾
Why isn't there a decent alternative? The current alternatives tend to be very poor.
Google also "paces" their results. They say they have 2,503,000 results, but the page shows you 25 of them. They will show you more next time, and next time a few more,
in other words, they don't show you their search results, they should only a few so you search again and get more ads. More ads, more ads, more ads is what they serve, not results.
I automatically ignore ad's. I guess google has trained my mind to filter out ad's.
Thanks, Leo!
Thank you!
Both of us... swapped for Start Page but, due to captcha issues, landed at DDG. It is excellent with its bangs.
Thanks for posting mate, very informative
What ever happened to Alta Vista? A long tine ago. Cheers.
It was sold to Yahoo in 2003, and discontinued in 2013 (according to quick Google search :) )
Bought by Yahoo, search results came from Yahoo search afterwards => useless. Eventually Yahoo shuttered Altavista completely.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltaVista
I use Duck Duck Go but frankly the ads don't bother me as I don't click on the first result because they are usually paid for. As for Kagi, there is no (or at least very little) way I would pay for search results, especially considering how little I search for things - I just don't see the value.
I too use DuckDuckGo as there’s no advertisements and it doesn’t come out with Chinese adverts from Temu at the top of the page
Totally agree on that, I don't search for enough important things to pay for them.
there are also so many alternatives out there its definitely not worth paying for one if you tried 100 already what is the chance this one will do it right
I've tried more alternative search engines than I can remember, I actually lost count. What do I remember though is that although google does filter and suppress results in a way that they didn't used to many years ago, when I use the alternative S.engines after the first few results pages the relevance and accuracy of the results falls off a cliff, as compared to google's. Even though google has become so conspicuously hyper-commercialized that it takes the patience of a saint and drilling down into actual real search results, once there the number of results relevant to the search terms is still substantially more than what I've gotten from other S.engines. That's the only reason I still use Google, occasionally.
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.
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!
Just a technical detail - businesses don't pay for ads to display. That is free. They pay only when somebody clicks them.
Not entirely true. CPC (Cost per click) is indeed the prevalent model, but Google has been testing, and others have long used, CPM (Cost per thousand views).
@@askleonotenboom No, you are mistaken. In your video, you talk about text and product ads in search. The CPM strategy has never been available for these kinds of ads. CPM is used only with banners, CZcams ads, Gmail ads, etc., but not in Search Network.
With banner and video ads, your goal may be the biggest reach possible - for brand awareness and what have you. That's why CPM can be useful. And Google doesn't give a shit what ads it shows. It just wants your money.
But in search, Google still wants to show the results people click on because if it's not relevant for them, the "search" function does not work, does it? The whole search engine concept would break. That's why using CPM model in search would be patently absurd.
Btw., CPM has been available in Google Ads for many years as a proper bidding strategy, so I'm not sure what "testing" you're talking about.
I've been a PPC specialist (working with Google Ads) for 7 years now. It's obvious you've read something somewhere but you don't understand it in a broader context and, in reality, you have no idea what you're talking about.
@@askleonotenboom My reply to your comment mysteriously disappeared so I'll be short this time.
You are mistaken. Product and text Ads in Google Search don't use CPM strategy.
CPM is used only with banner ads, video ads, Gmail ads, etc. Never in search - the topic of your video.
And I don't know what "testing" you're talking about since CPM has been a proper bidding strategy for many years now.
@@askleonotenboom so you mean YES, it IS the situation. Not 'not entirely'.
I get it, but… Digging rabbit holes about “what is correct” is now a contest of “what is less bad”. I also do this on macroeconomics or fiscal policies - they’re all badly or erroneously presented in media…
Thing is, we’re stretched by constantly discussing “less bad” options, when we simply need good ones. The internet used to be a concoction of ‘many’, but is today dominated by platforms - these are platform economies, business domains.
Doctorow’s term is about the internet as a whole. Google or Bing are examples of service capitalisation - creating nominal growth (stock value) from services by extracting data and hacking users’ behaviour (b. economics).
We end up working more to pay for the enshitification itself, and settle for “less bad”. That’s just exhausting for end users not in a B2B ‘market’… 😅
Clearing history/cookies is another way of avoiding some of the ad track & traffic, shouldn't it?
Firefox has some stealth browsing mode you can set in the privacy options. Clearing cookies can mess things up.
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.
No. There search engine services store your information on their own end. The browser should not be confused with the search engine.
Browser fingerprinting also
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.
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!
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.
@@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.
@@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 *CZcams 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.
2:22 - "these are not the coffee makers that you are _searching_ for ":D
uBlock Origin...
Let me know when UBO starts pulling "actual information" out from behind paywalls and displaying those results above the SEO'd ads disguised as listicles.
And you can't tell us how much Kaji costs?
I remember when I was the manager of a computer lab in a non profit, my assistant walked in the door and asked if I've heard of Google Search. This was 1999 or 2000. Alta Vista was the search engine.
I really hate modern search engines. I loved the Boolean searches of Alta Vista. Wade right through the wheat, no chaff.
And you can't search for it? I didn't include it because if the prices change I'm instantly wrong (and get a slew of comments telling me so). For the record: kagi.com/pricing
Sir, thank you for your analysis!
There is also the valderian tiktik specification to the IOCU that complicates things. All ads should follow that hepcat standard for stand-in usage but hardly any ever do.
i wish i had any idea what this comment was trying to say
I stopped using google when it became hard to do basic research on the site. Like I don't want the bloody medical sites that paid to appear I want the real ones that people believe is best. Same with other random searches I feel like I want to learn something but google never gives me an answer brave with its kinda faulty AI thing does a way better job I advise just looking carefully as sometimes it makes contradictions to itself I can't remember any but I was looking into some chemistry stuff & it made a mistake that would be obvious to anyone who'd done some school chemistry.
"People believe" all kinds of things. Popularity is a terrible proxy for quality.
@@mallninja9805 I wrote that badly. What I should've said was I want the medical sites with actual credit & proper research behind them like the NHS & WHO & such instead of some obscure site. Then again they can be wrong but that's better than putting trust in the paid results alone.
WHAT DOES KAGI COST???
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
@@waynea4651 I think so too. It is for people who make very frequent searches and who want NO advertisements.
Broken fingers? Broken mouse?? Broken caps lock?!
@@blynkers1411 RULE 31: CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL.
Big problem for me with them is that the results are often sponsors, videos (which is fine as sometimes they are mine) and then a whole row of Reddit / Quora / Amazon etc before you get down to some actual results. Also, they just ignore the search terms so if I want xyz then I only want the terms xyz in the title and description, not what Google think I want.
Loved your clear and calm presentation. Thank you.
I don't see the problem of ads based of prior search behaviour. If I searched for buying a particular car model then it's more beneficial that other companies come into focus selling the same type of model too.
The amount of money companies like google get per ad has crashed dramatically. They have all gone scared and abandoned any principles they might have once had.
Furthermore, there are armies of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) weasels out there working daily to hack Google's algorithms and get their pages to the top of the search results by various tricks. The weasels seem to have started winning some time ago. People responded by adding 'Reddit' to the search request, but I think even that is not working as well as it once was.
Plus there are scammers who optimised their false contact numbers to companies customers might want to contact, showing on top searches, with numbers leading to their scam call centres. And google does nothing about it.
And Reddit really isn't any better if you try creating your own post, gone are the days of forum pages where all you had to do was post a short introduction about yourself at most. Now, it's all about karma farming and privatizing subreddits if something petty occurs from behind-the-scenes
@@damian9303 that's interesting. Registered with reddit just recently and couldn't make my own post. Didn't understand why. Lost interest going there further. I initially found it interesting for certain topics, but if I wanted to discuss my own interest, I couldn't. And the barrage of random questions on the intro page... what's the purpose? Sounds like a junk for clicks, to draw in as much traffic as possible, just people cannot have a proper discussion on some proper topics if they wish.
startpage displays no ads. It uses Google as the search engine but strips off all personal history (etc.) information and ads.
Google is a two-tiered search engine. First it searches its database of advertisers, and then it searches the Internet as a whole.