From Climategate to Covid, Google neutered their once powerful search engine in service of a political narrative.
Since ChatGPT burst onto the scene 2½ years ago, Wall Street has wondered whether it was a major threat to Google’s search business. And with Alphabet Inc.’s stock now 25% off its highs, a Melius Research analyst is exploring that question with a bit more intensity.
Melius’s Ben Reitzes asked Monday whether Google is the next Kodak.
if Google search dies it will more likely because Google has prostituted its search algorithm in favour of advertisers. It is now pretty unreliable.
Same for Amazon.
Searching for products on either site has become bad.
Searching either for for “100% merino cardigan” yields lots of things, but not many 100% merino cardigans
Amazon’s search is so frustratingly bad, that I never use it until I’ve already DuckDuckGone to find the precise product I want and THEN type as specific a search as possible into Amazon … including model numbers and everything else possible.
And then I usually just end up ordering the product direct from another vendor online as a result of my initial search.
Yes, of course Amazon floods my searches with irrelevant crap … because that’s what their ChiCom sellers have PAID them to do.
Start Fred said.
Also, I haven’t used Google as my primary search engine in over a decade, since I learned how they suppress results. I only use it if I can’t find what I’m looking for by other means. Their reverse image search is still good though.
In the 1980’s I adopted Google lonnnnngggg before the general public even knew who they were. They were BY FAR the best search engine available. I’ve been OFF Google for at least 30 years as they evidently hired the fully indoctrinated know-it-all leftist apparatchiks from across the planet (and made them all Googlaires).
Some of the younger folks may not get how Kodak was a part of everyone’s life …
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/05/17/corporations-of-mass-destruction-eastman-kodak-operated-a-nuclear-reactor-with-weapons-grade-uranium-for-30-years/#
X/Twitter will have their email available by summer this year, the current head of affairs at X/Twitter is busy atm..
The plan to have an X search engine is still in the works, for now there are a few alternatives though I use Google image search daily, perhaps it’s worth having a look at the alternatives to that. One becomes accustomed to using “this” site and never even sees what else is available.
google search requires extra precision to get past the near misses.
and the barn doors. its junk piled high with more junk.
Not much of a user or fan of Google, but I can’t quite wrap my head around how LLM’s and their consistently confidently wrong answers have become the latest fascination. They’re a financial black hole for a garbage product that’s getting worse, not better. Of course, this is all brought to you by the same people who brought you cryptocurrency and NFT’s. The only benefactor appears to be chipset manufacturers. Maybe I’ve just answered my own question…
Both Google and DuckDuckGo are horrid. Especially Google! Musk has a golden opportunity here to create a search engine that actually gives people what they’re looking for. I know – so crazy an idea it might actually work, right?!?!
When they want to bury something, they do it well. Years ago I wrote a column about how the California Air Resources Board (CARB) refused a Ford Motors proposal to re-write emissions laws. Ford’s research had shown they could reduce lifetime regulated emissions across the product line, if the initial emission target was rolled back slightly. They could reduce costs AND reduce emissions over the 2/3 to 3/4 of a vehicle’s life span that was not under the emissions warranty period. CARB rejected the idea solely on the basis that it would appear that the automaker was influencing legislation. You used to be able to find the original story using Google. Not any more. I also did one on the folly of Ontario shutting down coal plants based on “particulates”, simply by using the province’s own published figures on Ontario air quality, and particulate sources by region. Not nearly as easy to find, now.