Testimony during Google’s antitrust case revealed that the company may be altering billions of queries a day to generate results that will get you to buy more stuff.
  • Billiam@lemmy.worldEnglish
    64·
    1 year ago

    I’ve said (and read) it before: the concept of a great search engine is exactly at odds with advertising. A good search engine gives accurate results fast, while the purpose of advertising is to show users what advertisers pay to show them. In other words, it’s the difference between showing users what they want to see, versus showing users what advertisers want them to see.

    Google knows that the more irrelevant results it returns, the longer you spend looking, which translates into more opportunities to show ads.

    • Bernie Ecclestoned@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      153·
      1 year ago

      I’ve just done the same search as in the article on Chrome, Firefox and DuckDuckGo

      Google served 5 ads before showing me M&S’ website

      DDG showed me an ad for Temu then M&S’ website

      Firefox showed me no ad, thanks ublock, and straight to M&S’ website

    • GeekyNerdyNerd@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      9·
      1 year ago

      Google knows that the more irrelevant results it returns, the longer you spend looking, which translates into more opportunities to show ads.

      Which is ironic, as Google only managed to get as far as they did by doing the exact opposite in an era where Alta Vista and the small handful of other OG search engines were focused on maximizing revenue via ads.

      Google has become that which they sought to destroy.

    • psychothumbs@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      71·
      1 year ago

      Yeah I’m pretty much exclusively on DuckDuckGo these days, which is partially based on Bing but with a lot more privacy, and never really have any trouble.

    • Neato@kbin.social
      5·
      1 year ago

      or it’s forum results from 2010. Nevermind I’ve explicitly asked for 2022, 23.

      I wish I could do the opposite. Sometimes there’s a new article about something and I want to search its history or find an article about it from a year ago to see what people were saying then. It’s all but impossible to find anything that isn’t trending. I know the info is there but no search engine I’ve used allows me to see it.

      When you mean using GPT, you mean you pull that drop-down from the top and talk to the AI? How do you know the info you are getting is accurate? AI has had a terrible track record of just regurgitating popular posts or making things up and AI can mask where the info came from, lending it an air of authority to what might be forum speculation.

  • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    23·
    1 year ago

    Google always seems to default to thinking that I am looking to buy something. It’s very nauseating. This is what Google shopping was supposed to be for. Search should be completely separated from shopping.

  • 👍Maximum Derek👍@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    41·
    1 year ago

    When I first switched off gmail there started to be a ton of stories that talked about Google doing terrible things with gmail. Now that I’ve recently given up Google search I’m seeing stories like this.

    Either I have Spidey-sense for Google’s skeletons getting exposed or it’s that thing where you buy a car then see the same model everywhere. But in my case it’s like I sold a car and now see the same model everywhere, on the side of the road with the engine on fire.

    • Deebster@lemmyrs.orgEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      As I was reading the article, I was thinking how glad I was that I switched - I am on the yearly plan now because I’m not going back to “free” search engines.

      • Paradox@lemdro.idEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        I’m on the yearly ultimate or whatever they called it. My wife is interested too, but they don’t have an equivalent to the ultimate in the family package (yet), so she just sticks with bing.