The store is for people, but the storefront is for robots
www.theverge.comSelling real things to real people means writing a steady stream of nonsense text that only web crawlers will ever read.
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I think Google peaked about 6-8 years ago now and then started slipping at an ever accelerating rate.
It’s almost useless for me when searching anything remotely technical or otherwise niche.
I almost consistently need to go to the second page of results now, something I don’t remember doing since like 2009.
I find Bing acceptable. Brave search works well. But I’m actually using Kagi now since I’m hoping their paid model will actually mean I’m not the product.
I tried searching for a comprehensive list of rule changes to the NBA in its history - something that DEFINITELY exists on a webpage. I near exclusively got news results from a recent rule change
duckduckgo is my go to now, but not out of lack of usability. haven’t used google for ~4-5 years for privacy concerns
I pretty much only use google to search other web sites, like “thing im searching for” site:beehaw.org or whatever. It’s completely useless otherwise.
The thing that upsets me most about this article is that when I try other search engines, I still find myself needing to use Google to find certain things. Usually that’s information or questions and not products, but if it’s this bad for Google I can’t imagine it’s any easier on the others.
I just use chatgpt 4. Much better at answering questions.
ChatGPT has no concept of truth or sources. It will straight up lie to you.
It’s nice for “creative” stuff but never, ever take its responses at face value.
It’s generative so it will generate plausible answers with no consistency of truthfulness.
We have common(-enough) sense to be able to pick up on whether it’s being sensible or not, after which we take to search engines. Search engines are now the fallback; a friend of mine and I have nearly totally replaced search engines with ChatGPT as the primary way of quickly, initially getting info now. If you stay aware of its limitations, it can be life-changing in a positive way.
Relying on common sense for critical information is a trap. You’re “googling” because you don’t know. The incorrect answer might be just plausible enough for you to believe it. This is why credible sources are important, to act as a sort of fallback to authority (I trust “source X” to provide correct information).
Don’t worry, eventually Google’s current project to replace all their own search results with their own “AI” sludge will make using them impossible to get credible information from too. :(
Obviously you need to check everything it outputs if you’re relying on that output for anything, but if you use web search it cites sources and you can look at those to check what it’s saying. Makes the whole process much easier
I would urge people.to reconsider this or atleast try out GPT4. I recognize that’s a normal viewpoint but from my usage and with back checking it, it was gotten profoundly good. To the point where I take recipe recommendations that it creates because it tastes delicious.
“But muh capitalism breeds innovation”
Short sighted behavior is hardly limited to capitalist enterprises, though.