I thought this was somewhat common knowledge, but having the documents on the public record instead of just the word of an ex-engineer should be a big deal.
this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
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Godamnit. It's so hard to guess which parts of the world suck from incompetence and which ones from active evil nowadays.
Of course, Doctorow already described this phenomenon in the essay about enshittification. It's no surprise the advertising company will pivot to advertisers and shareholders rather than users.
I had assumed that everyone had already read and internalized this very well written article, The Man Who Killed Google Search by Ed Zitron
I am also bad about assuming everyone has my exact knowledge set.
Capitalism reduces inefficiency and bolsters competition and innovation they said.
This is why we need to go back to personally-curated site directories 
When using a search engine whete you know what site you want info from, you can add site:hexbear.net to the search, for example is communism okay site:hexbear.net would only return results from hexbear
i stopped using google 'as intended' a long time ago, i mostly use it because i can't spell for shit
sadly they broke a bunch of the boolean keywords and use of quotes a long time ago
and use of quotes
yeah, that's mostly why it's useless to me now.
This has been known since 2008 by marketers. Even Google employees outright stated it at conferences.
Capitalist innovation at home:
Anyone tried any "premium" search offerings? I have a tech friend recommending Kagi and I wonder if anyone here has opinions about it.
I've been using meta search engines like 4get, searxng and whoogle right now.
4get has been really nice for me.
Know of any Google alternatives that allow equivalent dorking? SearX doesn't do the trick. 
I'll add a second recommendation for Kagi. Being able to block sites (like Pinterest) is a game changer too. Their search, though ridiculous at first to bring yourself to pay for what was once free, is more than worth it.
I use Kagi, highly recommend. I’ve found it tends to be better at filtering out blogspam and I use the “quick answer” feature a ton.
Interesting. I'm not enamored with the idea of paying for something that used to be high quality for free though :(
My google results are just completely filled with AI shit on any new topic though. And any old topic where I'm specificallllllly looking for a page I know exists because I've read it before the site gives me trash that's new-ish instead of the older page I know is perfect and doesn't need any new variation and should just be the best result for that thing forever lol.
You know what they say, if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.
it would probably depend on your search needs and habits. i use searx as my main search and it works good enough even if results are not great. i tried kagi for a bit and i didn't find a huge difference. it might have been a bit better with results and being able to group results is a great idea but the improvement was not sustancial enough to warrant the cost. also, having an account associated with your searches feels really problematic
I think there's a real chance google could be broken up. They've lost a couple of major antitrust cases in the past year but it remains to be seen what the judges will do. I think it's going to be difficult for everything that isn't ads to survive though if ads is what gets cut out.
:bill-hicks-shining:
need Bill Hicks emojis