Important addition: You'll have to set browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh to true in about:config to see the option to add search engines via URL. Otherwise you'll just see the option to remove them and a link to the add-ons page.
It's unfortunately still far more useful than other search engines, in my experience anyway. I haven't yet tried the paid search engine someone pointed out to me recently, Kagi, I think.
But given the cost of Kagi's tiers based on number of searches, it would have to be MUCH more useful to me than Google to really make it feel worth it.
They're outright censored. Search for information on certain drugs (dosages, best practices, etc) and Google will not show you any information beyond studies about the drug and rehab sites.
Whereas DDG, Bing, etc will show all the sites dedicated to safe drug usage. At least they did a few years ago.
That said, I don't particularly think this is a great example of Google fucking their own search up because there's reason to believe this may be due regulatory pressure.
It's not that it ignored it ten years ago and stopped, it's that much of it didn't exist to the degree it does now, and there was a lot more content being made of different websites, so there were actual results to show.
Google Search went to shit, it's true, but have you tried the other ones? They're not much better.
We have to acknowledge the internet itself went to shit. There's simply less to find out there than there used to be, because the majority of all web content and discussions moved away from individual websites and forums and centralized on a few platforms. They can filter out the SEO junk, but what would they replace it with?
Using just one example: I used to go to Google to search for news articles. Now, I cannot find those same articles using Google, but if I search really, Really, REALLY hard I can sometimes find them using DuckDuckGo (DDG). The search experience using Google was a million times better, ten years ago, than DDG is now, however DDG can work, whereas Google flat refuses to work no matter what I try.
And the reason why is illuminating: they try to push their SEO content, to "sell" me what they want me to see, rather than what I wanted to see. Even if I typed in the exact, precise title of what I wanted, but then lets say that I am off on one word like not sure if it was plural or not hence cannot put the title in quotes, Google will not show it often even on higher page numbers like 10, and instead just shows a steady stream of "popular" content. I recall a specific instance where I literally had the article pulled up on my phone, and I was trying to find the same article from a year or two in the past and even typing in the title, it just wouldn't do it, so I gave up and just typed out the URL manually. Sometimes also I will try to find a specific video, and it shows me videos that they think I want to see, but even with the title matching it really struggles to show older content, even when it was super popular at the time.
Tbf it has actually gotten much better lately, compared to a couple of years ago, though the way that it seems to have gotten better is with all these extra ad-ons that they've put onto their pages. Like it used to be that if you pick some random word - let's use "serenity" as the example - it would show you almost nothing related to the definition of that word until page 2 or 3, and instead show various pages about the (awesome) Joss Whedon movie of that name. Now, the little blurb ("widget"? I have no idea what that element is called) from Oxford Languages showing the dictionary definition as the second-to-top item, almost, after a very small "See results about Serenity 2019 film", and also a whole right-hand sidebar (on my desktop browser) about it, but the point is that it does show the definition, very high up in the list. Then for me I get imdb (2005) film, imdb (2019) film, wikipedia (2005) film, and then finally the Merriam-Webster definition page (btw I really hate how browsers won't allow us to select text that we would like to copy, but they have decided that they know better what they will allow us to do). And then ofc Serenity official trailer with Matthew McConaughey, Rotten Tomatoes review, again a Dictionary(.com) definition, the Serenity Symphonic Metal band, Amazon.com HD-DVD, Cambridge dictionary - this is a lot better than it used to be! And yeah, DDG is similar.
It is a constantly evolving landscape, and depends heavily on what types of content you are searching for too.
If you're using the browser search field to do your searches, I expect you could simply have Firefox at least can simply set up a custom search using "!g" and using whatever search URL you want. Then Firefox would redirect the search before DDG sees it. Should also be a little faster, since you don't need to go to DDG first.
There may also be some browser addon that can rewrite URLs.
I should've responded to the person saying ddg doesn't allow custom ! s, and it was just tangentially related, but I just realised I misinterpreted what that person was talking about too so.. it doesn't really relate at all. Sorry
They know, and they know it's deadly long term, but the money from pushing ads to users like they're making foie gras is just too good. That's what MBAs in charge gets you.
Yeah, I'm convinced they know. We know it, they know it, and I'm pretty sure at this point they know that we know it. So, like, what, we're all just gonna hold hands into the apocalypse? Sorry, I'm not trying to come off as being shitty at you. Like a lot of people I'm just very frustrated with the way things are in a wide selection of sections of society and I just can't help but think of Kitty Genovese in times like this
we’re all just gonna hold hands into the apocalypse
More likely departments or the entire company, if valuation drops too low, is sold to a private equity firm. Profits from the sale get showered over the shareholders. The private equity firm is going to drastically restructure Google and if that doesn't work give it a few more squeezes to get the profit out and sell the tech for parts. That's the standard play book.
That requires the valuation to drop. A ton of people just go with what they know and are only fuelling it, creatures of habit and convenience and whatnot.
That's true up to a certain level. Then a moment comes where the pain of using it becomes bigger than the convenience and there is an exodus. Some call that the trust thermocline . Or as some say how they went bankrupt as first gradually, then suddenly.
There's at least one public story from an ex-googler who worked on search having a big QoL feature update killed at the absolute last moment before it went live by someone in marketing/ads because it decreased click through rate for the "sponsored" results at the top of the search page.
There's at least one public story from an ex-googler who worked on search having a big QoL feature update killed at the absolute last moment before it went live by someone in marketing/ads because it decreased click through rate for the "sponsored" results at the top of the search page.
it's still ignoring your manually set browser language preferences and is instead using your IP to guess your location and use the primary language of that country, because google is shite
Those assumptions and deliberately disregarding what the user wants and replacing it with something that makes Google more money makes it such an astoundingly bad experience. But Bing and DDG somehow still give way worse results ime.
If I google something in English I'm going to get results in English (plus localised ads of course). But if I have a linguistic question about English, no matter how advanced, I'm going to get surface level results in Polish.
Tbf whatever info they have on me imples they're very confused. I get ads about: "stay legally in Poland! :)" and "leave Poland and get a job in the Netherlands/Germany! :)" then "polish lessons!" and "English lessons!", I'm starting to think that in the eyes of the AI overlords I'm both polish and not polish at the same time.
I think this article starts with an interesting premise (basically: RSS works to support podcast content creators, how can we make it work for written content creators?) and... misses the point.
Podcasts can make a lot of money off of sponsors and advertising that listeners are less likely to skip over. Maybe you're busy doing something else when the ad comes on, maybe you don't clue in that it's an ad right away, maybe you just don't know how long it is so as you skip around you hear enough anyways. Advertising works in an audio format.
Text content can't advertise as effectively. Your eyes can just skip over to the next part you care about. Adblockers work pretty well. A reader is way less likely to engage with advertisement, so it's going to pay less, so written content creators are going to make less. Usually to the point that they can't support themselves with it.
None of the author's points really address that. The problem isn't with the RSS standard, it's with the format and how it can make money.
I get the impression that for most people, text also isn’t the preferred format. Many prefer video/audio. Many people I know will put on a podcast in the background while they work, commute, cook, game, etc, leading to more ads per piece of content. They probably also can get more per ad due to targeting when compared to Google ads.
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