How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet
How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet
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.
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.
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.
If its free you are the product.
from the company that now completely ignores all the search syntax they trained us on – when
-,+,"..."actually meant somethingAre you kidding me? What the fuck
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.
Cory Doctorow’s post this morning – Google’s enshittification memos
“Google search is so bad you might as well ask Jeeves.”
Google‘s ‚auto complete‘ is driving me nuts sometimes and it‘s also prevalent on Youtube. I mean just scrolling through completely unrelated suggestions in Youtube‘s search results tells you how little they care to show you what you actually want and rather something that makes them more money one way or another. But the direct fiddling with actual search quarries is just malpractice for a search engine.
I hate Google
that's part of the reason I rarely use Google anymore
Kagi solves this problem
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.
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.
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.
I dunno about you, but THIS Queerie is trying their best to de-Google.
And the shitification is confirmed.
I use the perplexity app now. It's okay.
