this is a good idea to hotfix a stupid problem.
Getting 4 sponsored links and an AI overview before I get to the search results.
It’s basically all the shit Yahoo did to lose their search dominance.
Fun Fact: the current head of Google’s search is the same guy that was in charge of Yahoo’s search right before they folded their own search and just started licensing Bing.
You can disable the AI stuff and other nonsense if you do a “web” search, it’s in the list with images, videos etc. Theres also a thing you can add to a search url to do it - &udm=14.
Ddg already have this for some sites.
Light theme screenshot
Yeah that’ll fix it’s completely broken search.
It’s not broken, for google. It does exactly what they want, which is to help them gather data and manipulate people.
At work, we discussed this as a future issue in about 2000, when we saw it gaining major search share.
We regularly experiment with features that help shoppers identify trustworthy businesses online[…]
I like that Google calls their users “shoppers” /s
Now if they could just stop putting ad results above the app you search for in the Play store.
TIL people use the play store for stuff besides just a rare update and apparently browse it…
I don’t even mean browsing! Just trying to install something.
I search for “NordVPN” (because all the cool YouTubers use it!) and the first result is “Norton 360” with an install button.
It’s a “sponsored result” and it’s easy to install the wrong thing if you’re used to it actually finding the thing you just typed in.
If I put Firefox. I get duckduckgo. Okay, maybe not so bad and pretty obvious. But I’ve had these things for apps that almost look like the legitimate one.
