• WhiteOakBayou@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    At some point in the last two years I completely stopped using Google search in browser and just use Google maps to find businesses or ddg for searches. Actual Google search just has too many sponsored or promotional links

    • WeeSheep@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I just searched local restaurants near me and tried to sort by distance and the first option was 800 miles away, the second was 600 miles away. It’s not just Google search getting worse.

          • Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            9 months ago

            Changing the banner for like holidays and anniversaries of things isn’t an issue for me IMO

            But yeah all their tracking shit that you can’t opt out of is a big problem and a big part of why I’m pulling away from Google as much as I can

      • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Here’s the thing, Google has changed. Over time, they’ve restructured themselves, initially purposefully, but now they’re facing the consequences of that.

        Google genuinely does still have amazing programmers and engineers.

        The trouble is that their expertise is in crafting systems that harvest personal information; expertise in other areas has been left to rot because there’s no point in improving them.

        Gmail is already entrenched, as is search, YouTube, maps, android, etc.

        They aren’t going to attract a significant amount more customers, so their main avenue for continued growth has been to become better at harvesting and processing data.

        For a while that was fine, but now that this expertise has been lost, Google can’t make good products. They don’t have the ability to do so, it’s not that they don’t want people to use their software and think “wow this is actually pretty great”, it’s that they genuinely can’t do it anymore. Not unless the product you want is a telemetry system, in which case I doubt you’ll find anybody that can do such a stellar job.

        It’s a part of why Google starts then kills so many projects. They want to expand to collect more data, but they don’t have the ability to create good services anymore, so it just ends up being an advanced data collector with a sub-par app/website on top of it. The company just isn’t structured to make things in any other way.

      • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        they are probably putting sponsored results above the legit stuff.

        didnt someone get caught recently doing that?

    • clearleaf@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I think this is part of why Google holds on to youtube despite it not making them money. Without that Google would just be the map and email company. They would completely lose the appearance of “owning” any part of the internet.