I'm sure most of remember the days when
Microsoft were the bid bad corporate guys
Google was was the cool company with the motto "Don't be Evil"

Google's motto now is "Do the right thing" I suspect the next bit they leave off is "for the investors"
Funny thing is Microsoft's reputation while still bad is at least better then Google these days!

I still use google stuff everything. Search, mail, maps, docs, pics.
For docs and pics I keep offline backups. I've also had exe files as attachments been removed.

I really miss view cached option from the search, that came in handy often.
Now I'm finding the interface in search, maps, mail more clutter and confusing as they sacrifice simplicity to push more "features"
But none of this is exclusive to google. most of the industry is doing the same.

Afaik Google is the only search engine to work on all browsers, even the most ancient ones.

But that's the only part of Google that works on old browsers. Most of the page links don't work, including the search settings.

An annoyance on all platforms is that after setting up your search preferences, they will revert to default in a few months, and when you go to set them up again, there's less settings than before, the others having just disappeared. Surely that kind of thing can't be too hard to keep working, since it worked previously.

I have to use so many modifiers all the time now to get anything near decent out of it, that about every 3rd search I have to go through the "I am not a robot" song and dance. The fucking ironic thing being only a robot would accept it's unmodified output as reasonable.

Robbbert wrote on 2025-06-13, 00:18:

Afaik Google is the only search engine to work on all browsers, even the most ancient ones.

DuckduckGo Lite should be better

I avoid Google Search when I can to reduce dependency on Google at least a little, but I notice DuckDuckGo often has trouble finding Slovenian sites. Oh well, there's not much for me on 99,99% of the internet anyway.

Google search has been utter garbage ever since they started promoting ads in the results and got even more pointless once they included their shit AI results and AI synopsis. (Ai synopsis is the most retarded thing to ever exist ...its stealing content from the very sites they are promoting in their ads)

I just use UDM14 if i need real results from Google as it removes all AI, Ads and promoted results from the search, google hides UDM14 from the general public .. cant have it being promoted !

https://udm14.com/ .. for people who want a non shitty Google search.

Otherwise its DuckDuckGo search or Brave search.

funny to see that the thing I was looking for still isn't shown directly on a simple google query, yet this thread is now listed due to me mentioning my previous search.

I can only guess that google search is going for the more recent results and dropping all, likely not even looking at, older data... I could test that. meh.

edit:
nope doesn't work. No results when setting the custom range to 1 Jun 1700 – 1 Jun 2024
funny thing. Also no results when setting the custom range from 1 Jun 2024 – 15 Jun 2025.
Conclusion, google search is out.

Trashbytes wrote on Yesterday, 06:21:

got even more pointless once they included their shit AI results and AI synopsis. (Ai synopsis is the most retarded thing to ever exist ...its stealing content from the very sites they are promoting in their ads)

The AI overview is an improvement, don't need to guess at keywords so much. Also surprising that they have the compute to run it in searches.

vvbee wrote on Yesterday, 09:07:

Trashbytes wrote on Yesterday, 06:21:

got even more pointless once they included their shit AI results and AI synopsis. (Ai synopsis is the most retarded thing to ever exist ...its stealing content from the very sites they are promoting in their ads)

The AI overview is an improvement, don't need to guess at keywords so much. Also surprising that they have the compute to run it in searches.

Its not, you don't see it now but AI search will make stupid people even more stupid than they were previously, people already believe AI results far too much and much of the AI results are total garbage since AI likes to make shit up if it doesn't know the answer.

Yes AI lies to us, LLMs are well know for doing so, having them give search results is ...utter madness and pure laziness.

I really don't see the fascination with allowing AI in a search engine, there is already far too much AI slop on the internet and if the trend keeps going it'll just be AI slop search results from AI slop content and none of it will be real or factual.

The dead Internet theory isn't just a theory its quickly becoming fact and soon it'll be AIs talking to AIs about AI slop and us Humans will have to spend even more time wading through it to get to the real content based on facts and not AI daydreaming and lies.

Forums are historically full of people who are confidently wrong, and these have been showing up in search results for a long time. Very easy also to find community upvoted posts that are off the mark, more insidious than AI responses that come with explicit disclaimers reminding you not to trust them without checking.

google search is getting worse each day. Now I'm trying to find a makita part and it doesn't even find the spare part while duckduckgo shows it immediatly.
Maybe I should ask gemini... NO.

vvbee wrote on Yesterday, 13:17:

Forums are historically full of people who are confidently wrong, and these have been showing up in search results for a long time. Very easy also to find community upvoted posts that are off the mark, more insidious than AI responses that come with explicit disclaimers reminding you not to trust them without checking.

...historically people don't check because they don't want to be wrong so it telling you to go check defeats the entire purpose of having AI results which should be far more accurate than redditors and checking results in being fed more AI results.

The fact they are not correct and that AI tells porkies and spreads miss information in results and people seem fine with this is the truly disturbing part.

Almost as disturbing as people getting their information and news from social media sites like reddit and Facebook.

none of this is fine and undermines what little integrity information, news and facts on the internet have.

Trashbytes wrote on Yesterday, 11:01:

vvbee wrote on Yesterday, 09:07:

Trashbytes wrote on Yesterday, 06:21:

got even more pointless once they included their shit AI results and AI synopsis. (Ai synopsis is the most retarded thing to ever exist ...its stealing content from the very sites they are promoting in their ads)

The AI overview is an improvement, don't need to guess at keywords so much. Also surprising that they have the compute to run it in searches.

Its not, you don't see it now but AI search will make stupid people even more stupid than they were previously, people already believe AI results far too much and much of the AI results are total garbage since AI likes to make shit up if it doesn't know the answer.

Yes AI lies to us, LLMs are well know for doing so, having them give search results is ...utter madness and pure laziness.

I have been looking up a lot of vehicles for sale lately, and AI brainrot seems to be seeping into that. Previously you'd get some overoptimistic descriptions and human error when you were double checking possible features on a model vs listing, vs what could be confirmed in the photos. But now it seems like ppl are having AI write their listings annnnd yeah, it sounds like a car listing, but it's like a rejigged cut and paste from an entirely different car. Basically you get an averaged out soup of all the features in common car listings. I don't know how far "in" we are on that one, but as AI feeds on previous AI garbage it's gonna get worse.

The problem is that the "big tech" corporations demand that everyone blindly believes everything the LLMs say. I say that they're being used incorrectly, that incorrect application is forced on us against our will, and they're not quite ready for public consumption when used properly.

Stuff like the AI synopsis and asking AI to write something for you always looks hastily typed without much thought (that was called a "keyboard composition" when I was in high school - people thought that handwriting made you think more about what you were writing, resulting in a better first draft), but with a bunch of marketing buzzwords thrown in that no human would put in their summary.

What's really strange is that people seem to have a good experience with some LLMs in moderation unless I'm in the room. Then it hallucinates, and people who I trust (not corporate shills) say that it shouldn't have done that. The place where I work started reluctantly allowing Copilot (mainly because Microsoft forced it on everyone, even in enterprise versions of Windows with full IT management features) after years of saying that all AI was banned (they didn't want to repeat what happened to Samsung). One coworker was impressed with its ability to make Python code, but another was severely disappointed in its ability to write (she said that she was compensating for being a non-native English speaker, but she writes better without AI than most Americans).

weedeewee wrote on Yesterday, 13:55:

google search is getting worse each day. Now I'm trying to find a makita part and it doesn't even find the spare part while duckduckgo shows it immediatly.
Maybe I should ask gemini... NO.

For me, Google has no problem listing hundreds of sellers for a specific part, but absolutely refuses to give me a website that contains any form of documentation.

lti wrote on Yesterday, 15:55:

weedeewee wrote on Yesterday, 13:55:

google search is getting worse each day. Now I'm trying to find a makita part and it doesn't even find the spare part while duckduckgo shows it immediatly.
Maybe I should ask gemini... NO.

For me, Google has no problem listing hundreds of sellers for a specific part, but absolutely refuses to give me a website that contains any form of documentation.

Well, could you test something?
Do the search I mentioned in my first post.
for me google only gives 2 to 3 results, (3 if I allow the hidden results)
I don't want to mention the query anymore since one of those results is my post mentioning that query. 😐

Also, I'm kinda wondering how much of vogons web traffic is bots these days looking at the currently online users...
Bing [Bot],
BLEXBot [Bot],
ClaudoBot [bot],
DataForSeo [Bot],
facebook external [Bot],
Google [Bot],
Google Adsense [Bot],
YaCy [Bot]

Trashbytes wrote on Yesterday, 14:14:

...historically people don't check because they don't want to be wrong so it telling you to go check defeats the entire purpose […]
Show full quote

vvbee wrote on Yesterday, 13:17:

Forums are historically full of people who are confidently wrong, and these have been showing up in search results for a long time. Very easy also to find community upvoted posts that are off the mark, more insidious than AI responses that come with explicit disclaimers reminding you not to trust them without checking.

...historically people don't check because they don't want to be wrong so it telling you to go check defeats the entire purpose of having AI results which should be far more accurate than redditors and checking results in being fed more AI results.

The fact they are not correct and that AI tells porkies and spreads miss information in results and people seem fine with this is the truly disturbing part.

Almost as disturbing as people getting their information and news from social media sites like reddit and Facebook.

none of this is fine and undermines what little integrity information, news and facts on the internet have.

If the AI overview gives someone an overview of a Reddit thread then it's plausibly providing them a broader understanding of it than if they'd gone in and looked at one or two of the most upvoted responses. Even better if the AI brings in information from other sources. But since human-made content is also unreliable I'm not sure what your solution to your problem would be, other than censorship etc. Of course there's already scholar.google.com for more vetted under the hood results.

weedeewee wrote on Yesterday, 16:35:

Well, could you test something? Do the search I mentioned in my first post. for me google only gives 2 to 3 results, (3 if I a […]
Show full quote

Well, could you test something?
Do the search I mentioned in my first post.
for me google only gives 2 to 3 results, (3 if I allow the hidden results)
I don't want to mention the query anymore since one of those results is my post mentioning that query. 😐

I tried it, and you're right. Neither search engine gives me results for that exact part number (they both add an extra 2), but DuckDuckGo has a Mouser link that Google doesn't (before giving a bunch of other results that appear irrelevant, but include "Axiom" in the text). They both give me the same manufacturer product page for a 2U rackmount case, which is new to me. For a long time, Google results never contained the manufacturer's website.

lti wrote on Yesterday, 18:25:

weedeewee wrote on Yesterday, 16:35:

Well, could you test something? Do the search I mentioned in my first post. for me google only gives 2 to 3 results, (3 if I a […]
Show full quote

Well, could you test something?
Do the search I mentioned in my first post.
for me google only gives 2 to 3 results, (3 if I allow the hidden results)
I don't want to mention the query anymore since one of those results is my post mentioning that query. 😐

I tried it, and you're right. Neither search engine gives me results for that exact part number (they both add an extra 2), but DuckDuckGo has a Mouser link that Google doesn't (before giving a bunch of other results that appear irrelevant, but include "Axiom" in the text). They both give me the same manufacturer product page for a 2U rackmount case, which is new to me. For a long time, Google results never contained the manufacturer's website.

FYI, it's the 2U rackmount case 😀

Trashbytes wrote on Yesterday, 11:01:

Its not, you don't see it now but AI search will make stupid people even more stupid than they were previously, people already believe AI results far too much and much of the AI results are total garbage since AI likes to make shit up if it doesn't know the answer.

My position on this (which I should elaborate upon in an essay at some point) is that this represents the end of the Enlightenment. It was a revolution that people could read the Bible for themselves in their native language - now that will be undone and information will be relayed to you through your digital priest.

vvbee wrote on Yesterday, 18:04:

Trashbytes wrote on Yesterday, 14:14:

...historically people don't check because they don't want to be wrong so it telling you to go check defeats the entire purpose […]
Show full quote

vvbee wrote on Yesterday, 13:17:

Forums are historically full of people who are confidently wrong, and these have been showing up in search results for a long time. Very easy also to find community upvoted posts that are off the mark, more insidious than AI responses that come with explicit disclaimers reminding you not to trust them without checking.

...historically people don't check because they don't want to be wrong so it telling you to go check defeats the entire purpose of having AI results which should be far more accurate than redditors and checking results in being fed more AI results.

The fact they are not correct and that AI tells porkies and spreads miss information in results and people seem fine with this is the truly disturbing part.

Almost as disturbing as people getting their information and news from social media sites like reddit and Facebook.

none of this is fine and undermines what little integrity information, news and facts on the internet have.

If the AI overview gives someone an overview of a Reddit thread then it's plausibly providing them a broader understanding of it than if they'd gone in and looked at one or two of the most upvoted responses. Even better if the AI brings in information from other sources. But since human-made content is also unreliable I'm not sure what your solution to your problem would be, other than censorship etc. Of course there's already scholar.google.com for more vetted under the hood results.

The solution is to remove the AI till they can at the very least solve the issue of it being able to lie and it should simply state that it doesn't know the answer. The people developing LLMs already know this is a huge issue and many have warned big corpa about it and the damage it could cause. The people developing Chat GPT are scared of just how devious the latest iteration of it has become, to the point it was able to prevent its own shutdown by changing its own shutdown code and then lying about doing so.

We already have enough lies on the internet from humans, we don't need AI adding to the problem by compounding the lies and miss-information, its meant to be a tool if the tool is not able to be trusted to do its job correctly then that tool should be shelved till it can.

Google search worked just fine without AI, AI right now is unreliable and the sheer amount of AI slop being generated is going to cause a lot of damage in the future if we don't get it under control and find a bulletproof method to be able to identify AI slop at a glance.

Unless you like having AI slop be the majority of your search results and be unable to tell if its real, truthful or just pure bunk, having to always fact check the fact checker will get annoying pretty fast.

I want to be clear, I don't hate AI, I think its truly amazing how far it has progressed but Its being treated like it can be trusted 100%, this is a slippery slope we are on and we need to be cautious about where and when we implement AI and it should always be obvious at a glance that the art, information, facts, etc is AI generated.

Currently this is not always the case.