Stop using Google. You can’t change them, you have to leave.
I swapped to ddg about a year ago. I’ve noticed their search results are not the greatest either. There is so much spam and paid articles that make it to the top search results I often end up frustrated trying to find what I’m looking for.
The Internet really is enshittified.
I’ve been using it for years at this point, and I really prefer it to google. For most of my common/easy searches, it gets what I want pretty reliably. Occasionally I’ll have more obscure searches where I do have to switch back to Google, but honestly Google feels less and less helpful for that as time goes on. To add, DDG has bangs which are just wonderfully handy. Turning your search into a google search is as simple as adding “!g” to your query, and it’ll redirect the search. There are tons of other ones too, it’s a really nice feature that makes DDG more convenient in a lot of cases. Very much worth trying out at least
It’s really good these days. Kagi is still the beat, but if you want free, DDG is the way to go.
Free Google (& other) proxy: SearXNG
Further reading / Instances: Searx.space
One good instance: SearXNG.site
For basic searches (kinda a Bing reseller with disappointing results): DuckDuckGo
Vote-with-your-wallet alternative: Kagi (who may have astroturfed or may have not, but great engine at $10/mo unlimited - have tried their free trial)
Comments of mine RE: why everybody’s just reselling search ($1b+/yr to operate your own crawler): one and two
this is wrong, because today you won’t find the thing you’re looking for at all. Just 100 results where one word of your 5 word query vaguely matches.
And then you notice that your search term was “corrected” to something completely different. Looking at you too, Amazon.
Fuuuuuuuck Amazon is even worse, if that’s possible. You used to be able to search for a product and would get that as the first result or at least on the first page. Now, they just return shit that is vaguely related but is a paid sponsor or someone manipulating their search algorithms.
Slight update to this comic, to call out the dangers of Google’s Sponsored Results.
Examples, for those that are not aware of this risk:
- https://www.techradar.com/avoid-google-ad-malware
- https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/scams-verify/google-ads-scammers-redirect-website-url-different-search/536-4ef6c41d-087e-4db9-a281-86bcf7637c68
- https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/01/using-google-search-to-find-software-can-be-risky/
- https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2023/01/rogue-sites-causing-trouble-in-google-advert-results
I rarely trust top results from google, since I’m uncertain if I somehow missed the tiny gray text saying that it’s an add.
Stop using Google.
And Microsoft. And Apple. And Amazon. And every single corporation that cares more about money and stealing people’s privacy than serving you.
Yep!
It’s all trash these days. We’re having to just avoid the worst of it while preparing for the rest of it to also suck so bad that we have to find even more alternatives, and then just throw our computers away at the end or at least go back to computing where it wasn’t all about stealing data, long, long ago.
I get where you’re coming from, but I also feel like I might get kind of bored and I wonder how I’m going to get that hot sauce from Alabama that I like. I’ll give up on a lot of my ideals and trade a LOT of frustration for artisanal hot sauces.
So, do you suggest just not using computers altogether?
Getting some cheap Nokia for the cellphone and be done with it? (Ig a refurbished IBM ThinkPad with FOSS on it is also fine)
Old computers, Free OSes. No mobile devices, not even old shitphones. Bring back payphones.
I’m honestly amazed no one’s sued google over the site telling them things like “Jump off a bridge if you’re depressed” or that products have been recalled that haven’t
