• APassenger@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        I stopped using them months ago. I only notice when I’m looking for places (e.g., restaurants, barbers).

        I’m not unhappy but may still shop around.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Part 5 is where I don’t see this actually going.

      Look at twitter. Now look at mastodon. Tell me which one is more shitty. Now tell me which one has something like 85% of the market, and which one most people haven’t heard of.

      Just because something it better, doesn’t mean people use it. You can fit all of Lemmy in the world in one of the larger NBA size arenas. You can’t even fit twitters total user base into some smaller CITIES.

          • Womble@lemmy.world
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            2 years ago

            At least in the UK there is now lots of mainstream discussion of “Is it time for people to leave twitter as it’s too much of a cesspool”. Granted they usually then mention threads or bluesky as an alternative not mastodon, but it is definitely possible for social media companies to die out. Once people start to leave in large numbers it can become a mass exodus (see digg and myspace).

            • Sckharshantallas@lemmy.world
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              2 years ago

              I think the issue now is that the market got fragmented and now you can’t find as much content as before without using multiple services, which is an annoyance.

          • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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            2 years ago

            He’s now suing advertisers to force them to pay him money because he told them (literal quote) to go fuck them selves after they didn’t wanted to have their ads shown next to neo Nazis, and well, they all left. Good luck with that, forcing advertisers to come back, lol.

            Twitter is barely having any income and the interest in the loans to buy twitter alone cost a billion per year.

            Twitter (and I fucking refuse to call it x) will be gone soon

    • InFerNo@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago
      1. Say no
      2. You don’t show up in Google search results
      3. You still show up in other search results
      4. Google is no longer bringing the best results
      5. People stop using your site
      6. You lose
    • UprisingVoltage@feddit.it
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      2 years ago

      Unfortunately, the vast majority of people do not give a single fuck and they will use whatever is preinstalled on their device

  • Subverb@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    We’re at a point where not only should the Internet be classified as a utility, so should Search.

  • SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
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    2 years ago

    Oh look, more anticompetitive shenanigans.

    Break Google up. Bring the full force of antitrust down on them.

    Anything else is an unmitigated disaster waiting to happen.

  • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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    2 years ago

    Can someone explain why the fuck Google is pushing this so hard? Generative AI is not a general intelligence, and useless for concrete facts. Google has already demonstrated how shitty it is for information, and the people with the knowledge to work on the project have to know this.

    So why the fuck are they all full steam ahead on something that will always be useless for them?

    • towerful@programming.dev
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      2 years ago

      AI is hype.
      They’ve recently signed a deal with Reddit for AI parsable data. Reddit reciprocated by allowing Google to be the only indexable search engine.
      Google now thinks it can do the same to literally everyone else.
      Googling is pretty damn mainstream.
      Don’t give Google your data, then don’t be included in googles search results. It’s like a flip of their previous trade with reddit, except it’s not a trade. It’s extortion.

      Reddit never gave Google traffic. They gave them content and data.
      And Google thinks it can withdraw traffic from other sites unless they get data in return.
      Google is a monopoly.
      Literally extortion

    • Squizzy@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Ddg are shit too, search a name and they will relate it you locally even if you turn off regional results.

      Click a link and go back to results and they have changed.

      Ddg is enshittifying.

    • exanime@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I found ecosia faster and better results. Just letting you know in case you want to try

            • TheRealKuni@lemmy.world
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              2 years ago

              Just looked it up to confirm. From DuckDuckGo’s page on the topic:

              Most of our search result pages feature one or more Instant Answers. To deliver Instant Answers on specific topics, DuckDuckGo leverages many sources, including specialized sources like Sportradar and crowd-sourced sites like Wikipedia. We also maintain our own crawler (DuckDuckBot) and many indexes to support our results. Of course, we have more traditional links and images in our search results too, which we largely source from Bing. Our focus is synthesizing all these sources to create a superior search experience.

              Edit: That said, I’d rather use DDG than Bing because DDG eats Bing’s tracking for me, as I understand it.

  • endofline@lemmy.ca
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    2 years ago

    That’s actually a good news. Maybe we’re able to revert the internet to the times before the Eternal September happened

    • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      This will never happen. We might get some of the issues more regulated, and people may move away from others, but you can’t put the Furies back into the box. Things will change, but we will never have the early internet again.

      • endofline@lemmy.ca
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        2 years ago

        We can, closed communities with some effort to enter the group. I pretty much ditched most main stream social media and use what it used to be mailing lists and discord servers. It’s not about technology. Internet and access used to be simply exclusive and we have to create exclusive channels to communicate about f.e. arts, history, technology or even occult where there is no “free riders” with no knowledge. That’s what I mean and this may happen imo. Quality over quantity

    • WhatsHerBucket@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Same! I swore I wouldn’t pay for a search engine, but I feel like it’s absolutely worth it, considering the current state of things.

    • ZephyrXero@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      It’s definitely better…but. Thanks to Google SEO the internet it’s bringing you results from is still filled with shit

  • msage@programming.dev
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    2 years ago

    Please understand that this is the next ‘SEO’ shit.

    It was going to be this from the very start.

  • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    As I understand it, this is only about using search results for summaries. If it’s just that and links to the source, I think it’s OK. What would be absolutely unacceptable is to use the web in general as training data for text and image generation (=write me a story about topic XY).

    • elrik@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      If it’s just that and links to the source, I think it’s OK.

      No one will click on the source, which means the only visitor to your site is Googlebot.

      What would be absolutely unacceptable is to use the web in general as training data for text and image generation.

      This has already happened and continues to happen.

      • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        No one will click on the source, which means the only visitor to your site is Googlebot.

        That was the argument with the text snippets from news sources. Publishers successfully lobbied for laws to be passed in many countries that required search engine operators to pay fees. It backfired when Google removed the snippets from news sources that demanded fees from Google. Their visitors dropped by a massive amount, 90% or so, because those results were less attractive to Google users to click on than the nicer results with a snippet and a thumbnail. So “No one will click on the source” has already been disproven 10 or so years ago when the snippet issue was current. All those publishers have entered a free of charge licensing agreement with Google and the laws are still in place. So Google is fine, upstart search engines are not because those cannot pressure the publishers into free deals.

        This has already happened and continues to happen.

        With Gemini?

        • elrik@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          The context is not the same. A snippet is incomplete and often lacking important details. It’s minimally tailored to your query unlike a response generated by an LLM. The obvious extension to this is conversational search, where clarification and additional detail still doesn’t require you to click on any sources; you simply ask follow up questions.

          With Gemini?

          Yes. How do you think the Gemini model understands language in the first place?

          • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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            2 years ago

            The context is not the same.

            It’s not the same but it’s similar enough when, as the article states, it is solely about short summaries. The article may be wrong, Google may be outright lying, maybe, maybe, maybe.

            Google, as by far the web’s largest ad provider, has a business incentive to direct users towards the web sites, so the website operators have to pay Google money. Maybe I’m missing something but I just don’t see the business sense in Google not doing that and so far I don’t see anything approximating convincing arguments.

            Yes. How do you think the Gemini model understands language in the first place?

            Licensed and public domain content, of which there is plenty, maybe even content specifically created by Google to train the data. “the Gemini model understands language” in itself hardly is proof of any wrongdoing. I don’t claim to have perfect knowledge or memory, so it’s certainly possible that I missed more specific evidence but “the Gemini model understands language” by itself definitively is not.

  • Kethal@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Google is genuinely bad now. I switched to Ecosia which is just Bing with a simpler front end and they use their profits to plant trees. I don’t think Ecosia is particularly special though. Duck Duck Go, Bing whatever, they’re all better than Google.

    Whenever I set up a new computer then search for something, I’m always surprised at first seeing the awful layout and quality of the search results before I realize that I haven’t changed the default search from Google. It’s awful now. Seriously, how are people using it?

    My new favorite way to search is perplexity.ai. It’s an AI search tool that summarizes the loads of crap out there so you don’t need to read through the junk that people write. It provides sources, unlike using ChatGPT, which is incredibly valuable. All AIs make shit up, so having links to double check it is a must. Unlike Bing Chat, or whatever Microsoft calls it this week, you can ask follow up questions to home in on what you want.