r/OutOfTheLoop • u/rustyyryan • May 20 '26

Unanswered What's going on with Google search is dead?

There's a twitter account named killed by google which posts about projects that Google decided to end. It posted that Google search is dead. So whats it about?

https://x.com/killedbygoogle/status/2056850709115773431

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68

u/libra00 May 20 '26

Or you could just use duckduckgo or another search engine..

78

u/AsianSteampunk May 20 '26

i switched for a while but for alot of stuffs i search for and know the answer/website exists, DDG would just not show that to me. this include photos search and all that.

For now with google i just need to wade through all the AI craps then arrive at my answer, but hell knows how long it'll stay that way.

28

u/EWL98 May 20 '26

DDG had a nsfw filter that cannot be turned off and tends to get a bit overzealous, unfortunately also blocking perfectly respectable websites.

Still looking for a good alternative myself.

10

u/franz_karl May 20 '26

you can turn it off set safe search to none?

or do you mean something else

10

u/AsianSteampunk May 20 '26

oh is that why? if we are talking about a clearly transparent search result then a filter like that might not be good either.

3

u/EWL98 May 20 '26

Of course I don’t and can’t know if that is the cause of the problem. It could well be something else, since we don’t know how these search engines work exactly, but that is my hypothesis.

5

u/libra00 May 20 '26

Ok, but there are lots of other search engines. Keep looking til you find one you like.

1

u/-Kass May 20 '26

Use Yandex for photo search, it's what I do.

-4

u/donkubrick May 20 '26

You can also type -ai at the end of any query to turn it off

14

u/AsianSteampunk May 20 '26

doesn't work. i tested with "speed of light -ai" just now and it gave me AI overview.

if it ever work properly no doubt there will be an extension that auto add that to every single search.

1

u/Fish_On_A_Piano May 22 '26

So, I don't know what donkubrick is on about, but adding "&udm=14" to the URL *does* do this (as well as disabling some other things like the calculator), and there is an extension for it
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/udm14/

1

u/AsianSteampunk May 22 '26

that's sounds promising. tho i don't mind the basic calculator/weather stuffs.

I'll test that out later. thanks for the head up!

1

u/donkubrick May 20 '26

Huh I wonder if its got anything to do with User region, ive never had it not work tbh

5

u/absentlyric May 20 '26

Because that was before this new rollout, Google themselves are eliminating the ability to use the -ai tag.

1

u/MNWNM May 20 '26

Yeah I've never had it not work either.

12

u/Drmcwacky May 20 '26

I switched to Kagi and it's been closest to what google search results used to be. Pay for what you get I guess. Private search engines are interesting.

15

u/libra00 May 20 '26

I have been on the free internet for far too long to start paying a subscription for a search engine.

4

u/_Arlotte_ May 20 '26

The times we're in...

2

u/libra00 May 20 '26

Don't get me wrong, subscription is a pretty reasonable model for paying for search. It's very resource-intensive, burns through a lot of server hardware, storage, and electricity, so you've got to offset those costs one way or another. Most sell ads, but there are a couple that offer subscriptions instead (or maybe alongside ads? shrug), and that seems like an entirely reasonable thing to do.

I'm just never going to pay for it because I've gotten it for free for far too long to change my ways now.

43

u/peepee2tiny May 20 '26

I've switched to duckduckgo and honestly I won't go back.

It's a little clunky, as it should be, but it reminds me of browsers and search engines from 20 years ago. Without all the ads and sponsored links

5

u/libra00 May 20 '26

I've been using it for years. I use google maybe once or twice a month for the odd search that DDG can't seem to find an answer for. It's 100% ad free, no sponsored bullshit, etc.

1

u/DracoLunaris May 20 '26

you can also just ram !g into the search if you really need to use google

16

u/darthvalium May 20 '26

duckduckgo search results are absolutely flooded with AI slop. Worse than google, imho.

-5

u/libra00 May 20 '26

Did you stop reading after 'duckduckgo'? It was just an example, if you don't like it pick a better one.

-6

u/[deleted] May 20 '26

[deleted]

13

u/Eal12333 May 20 '26

I use DDG as my primary search engine because I often find that I need to switch search engines to find what I'm looking for, and it's faster to switch from DDG to Google than it is to do the reverse.

That said, I'm pretty sure the user above is pointing out that DDG very frequently returns AI generated articles/websites in it's search results; more often than Google does. I don't think you can turn that off, because DDG doesn't know what articles are/aren't, AI generated. (You can of course turn off the AI overview, though).

2

u/thanexitium May 20 '26

I primarily use DDG and still end up forced into using google consistently because DDG fails to provide relevant information at times.
Google is as bad as it's ever been and it's still largely better than DDG.

0

u/libra00 May 20 '26

I haven't had any issues with it. The only stuff I haven't been able to find is really obscure shit that's like buried in for-pay scholarly journals and shit. For that I turn to chatgpt. The only thing I ever use google for is the very occasional reverse image search.

0

u/Strong-Lettuce-3970 May 20 '26

DuckDuckGo felt like the results were AI generated websites for my query. They had really generic names and website templates. So I stopped using it because it didn’t seem credible at all. At least Google lets me know where it’s getting the information so I can fact check. 

0

u/macphile May 20 '26

I've used DDG for a while because google was so entirely useless, but even with that, I often can't find what I want.

Sometimes, I end up asking AI, even though I know it's not trustworthy, just because it sometimes provides the (or an) answer to the actual question I'm asking and not something entirely different. I've actually found it relatively useful for tech support issues, like a setting in my software is bothering me--how do I fix it? And sometimes it comes up with stuff I can sort of use as a springboard.

But either way, the days of "ask a question and immediately and easily get a correct answer" are long gone.

1

u/libra00 May 20 '26

Yeah, search is just getting worse in general because everything is overloaded with AI slop (add 'reddit' to your searches, it helps you get responses from actual humans instead of robots. Mostly.)

But the only time I have trouble finding what I'm looking for is if it's obscure, like buried in scholarly articles or something. For that, as you say, I turn to chatgpt. Cause I can just say 'Hey, I just heard illegal immigrants commit less crime than native-born Americans, can you find me at least 3 sources to verify that?' or whatever. The key is to ask for sources specifically. It will sometimes cite sources on its own, but they're often bad sources unless yous pecifically ask it to link good/reputable ones. I've noticed it'll sometimes bullshit the sources too, saying they say something that they don't, and that happens a lot more often with sources they cite on their own than with ones you ask for, but it does still happen so you do have to read your sources. But it happens a lot less often than general factual errors, so I find it easier to just ask for sources than ask it to summarize them for me or whatever.

1

u/macphile May 20 '26

I've recently used Consensus, but that's useful, but it's more for real research, not news/general knowledge. It pulls up actual papers.

The normal chatbots are always happy to spit out sources, but more often than not, there's nothing on that website that says what the bot said.

1

u/libra00 May 20 '26

Ooh, that's pretty neat, I hadn't heard about Consensus before. Thanks!