• Matt@lemmy.worldEnglish
    101·
    1 year ago

    This is my take too - Google Search and YouTube especially which are owned by Google.

    Even if Chrome had like 5% market share, surely they could just push this anyway? While the Chromium monopoly is partially to blame for this, I’d argue the centralisation of the web is as well.

    Sure, “Google Search is useless now, you can’t find what you want!”, but the vast, vast majority of people still and continue to use it, and nothing will change that most likely.

    • kava@lemmy.worldEnglish
      126·
      1 year ago

      Google search isn’t useless. It’s getting worse but still Google is the best search. For a lot of general searches, Duckduckgo and Kagi have been sufficient for me. “What year did WW2 end” “what is the population of Crimea” “north Korean famine 1990s”

      But for example I had a picture of a specific motor an employee sent me that I had to find a replacement for online. It’s a niche motor we use for a large air compressor. All I had was some model / serial numbers. I tried plugging in different variations of the numbers and “motor” into both Duckduckgo and Kagi with no luck.

      On Google, the first result was a PDF of a Honda motor guide that had every single niche Honda motor and I was able to find the model name of the exact motor I needed, which allowed me to find a viable replacement on Ebay.

      It hurts me to say it, but the other web searches still haven’t reached total parity with Google. I use Duckduckgo as my primary and then when it doesn’t find me what I need, I go to Google.

      I would use Kagi but after it couldn’t find me the engine, I stopped paying my monthly subscription. Until then I was happy with it, but if I’m paying for a service and it isn’t any better than the free options…

      • iopq@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        That’s why you can add !g to your search query when you didn’t find anything on Brave or DDG

        • kava@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          Thanks for the tip, that sounds more convenient than opening Google in a new tab

      • Matt@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        For what it’s worth I’m not saying that - it’s just a common argument I’ve seen online lately in these spaces. I don’t actually know if it’s true because I don’t use Google Search.

      • RaoulDook@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        You can use Startpage to do a Google search by proxy. Startpage passes your search query to Google and returns the results to you without having to use Google directly.

    • joel_feila@lemmy.worldEnglish
      41·
      1 year ago

      Yeah reall I have seen people complain about google search followed by them using google. Neeva was a paid search engine that recently shut down. In theor fairwell message they explained getting people to pay for it was easy but the hardest part was explaing how to change search engines or what the difference between search engine and a broswer

    • w2qw@aussie.zoneEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      If Google wanted to push it with only 5% of their userbase wouldn’t they be saying goodbye to 95% of their users. I don’t think even Google is that insane.

      • Matt@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        No, because what is the chance people will give up YouTube?

        Not very high, I’d say!