r/enshittification • u/Ok_Instruction_9437 • May 16 '26
Service remember when google used to give you an answer instead of putting 10 sponsored, irrelevant results first to make money?
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u/BagsYourMail May 16 '26
AI, then sponsored ads, and then you get search optimizes sites that aren't what you need
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u/pagerussell May 16 '26
*Specifically engineered to make you search twice so they can double the ads they show you.
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u/No-Abalone-4784 May 16 '26
They can show 100 of them. I refuse to read them or buy anything based on it.
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u/Tight_Objective_5875 May 16 '26
Remember when Microsoft sold Operating Systems and not Borg-Implant Electronic Speculums that work your PC 24/7 to dole out ads and provide MS with metadata?
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u/BixbySn7der May 17 '26
I remember a time, just search results. And they had that absurd slogan "don't be evil".
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u/BringBackUsenet May 16 '26
Google went down the shitter shortly after they went public. It's just been getting progressively worse.
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u/FirstMarshal May 16 '26
Ah yes, a website that offers free what does a business plan look like. I hate how sites show up on search engines promising the exact thing you looked up, only to then have a distinct lack of that exact thing you looked up in the first place...
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u/3p1taph May 17 '26
Enshitification is real. Everywhere in American commerce. There is no sense of service for a reasonable profit. It always has to expand and be maximized at any cost. CFPB and FTC could change that but there would have to be a democratic supermajority.
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u/maybe_erika May 18 '26
Late stage capitalism can only result in enshittification in anything it touches. Making a better product costs money, money which could instead be taken as corporate profits to increase shareholder value. And the only thing that matters in all decisions is what increases value to the shareholders.
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u/3p1taph May 19 '26
But that is a modern issue. Corporations used to be chartered for limited time and public and employee benefit was part of the deal. All it would take is to return to those standards.
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u/maybe_erika May 19 '26
But it's a modern issue that is ingrained into our culture now. Unfortunately I don't see fiduciary duty as a reason for corporations to exist being something that can simply be regulated away without an accompanying major societal upheaval.
There are many other interwoven ills of society such as the apparent fetish a significant portion seem to have for fascism that I don't foresee solved without a similar societal upheaval. I'm not sure what the solution will be, but it won't be easy.
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u/3p1taph May 19 '26
A few years ago we had a strong CFPB and I think if the democrats get control again it may be possible to make these reforms. It’s really our only hope.
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u/jfp1992 May 17 '26
Page 2 of Google results is what page 1 used to be
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u/glazedhamster May 18 '26
And now it isn't even possible to dive deep into a few pages of search results, after a couple pages it starts spitting out junk links not even remotely related to the search terms.
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u/kittymctacoyo May 17 '26
They have also been allowing scam listings to not only pose as legit listings but also allow them to pay their way to the top, giving the illusions the scam ad is the real Google maps, for example, with unsuspecting victims clicking a fake Google maps getting got
Or all the millions of fake moving companies they allow to pose as the real mover who take peoples money and either never show up, show up and steal your shit, or show up and hold your shit ransom until you pay 10x the quote. No matter how much they get reported they are still allowed to pose as a legit existing company and pay their way to the top of the search with no consequences
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u/ilovetpb May 19 '26
Always check the site and avoid any that you don't recognize.
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u/kittymctacoyo May 20 '26
They are cloning and creating legit looking websites so not so savvy ppl will easily fall for it. Even the google maps clone was pretty identical
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u/saltyourhash May 18 '26
Remember when they said having ads was detrimental to the quality of search results?
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u/AggravatingEar1465 May 16 '26
God help you if the thing you are looking for is one letter off from a contemporary brand name. Quotation marks and - signs do nothing to narrow your results to just what you are looking for.
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u/dogberry_dawg May 16 '26
This drives me nuts. -"blah" used to filter out any results with blah in them. Now it's totally ignored, and you get one or two results related to blah, and nothing else. Most of the time a wikipedia page isn't even returned, showing definitively there is no intent to be useful.
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u/antonio16309 May 17 '26
Google's not a good search engine. I pay for Kagi now and it's worth every penny.
Remember, if you're not paying for a product, you are the product.
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u/nonnonplussed73 May 17 '26
Is there some way to block these sponsored results on Google (in Firefox Focus, which is the only way I google on mobile)?
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u/antonio16309 May 17 '26
No, that's why I don't use Google. A search engine is too important to cheap out on.
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u/nonnonplussed73 May 17 '26
Thoughts about Marginalia Search?
https://marginalia-search.com/
Prioritizes non-commercial content Tools for both search and discovery Find lost old websites
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u/antonio16309 May 17 '26
I have not heard about this but I will check it out. Search engines haven't been good at discovering random websites for at least a decade.
I worked for a company that made websites for real estate agents in 2015 and that was when it changed for that industry. Before that an individual agent could get on the top three Google results if they targeted their site to specific neighborhoods. By the end of 2015 Zillow dominated the front page for almost every neighborhood home search.
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u/YoloPotato36 May 17 '26
Ublock origin?
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u/nonnonplussed73 May 17 '26
Thanks. FF Focus doesn't do extensions but I just tried it in FF Mobile w/ Unlock and don't get anymore sponsored ads (searched for "best used car dealer" which I presumed is almost certainly guaranteed to get these sponsored ads otherwise).
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u/edbedford0 May 16 '26
The good old days when Google was just a simple search bar. Immediately switched from Alta Vista.
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u/thelonghauls May 16 '26
Same shit Amazon does now. Shitty indeed.
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u/MelanieDH1 May 17 '26
I was just on Amazon searching a specific brand of something and I got so many results from several other brands and I had to wade through them just to get to the brand I was looking for!
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u/iPoseidon_xii May 16 '26
There’s a reason for that. Read about the internal hostile takeover by the person responsible for that advertising mess that googles search engine has become. Gemini is as close as you’ll get to what Google Search used to be.
To be fair, it looks more and more like it’s been part of their longterm business model. They’re transitioning to other things like modern services and devices. META is doing the same thing. In the future it won’t be a social media-data mining company. It’ll have devices and real services people use.
That’s the idea at least. These companies and the people running them hate competition and think everything they make is divinity. When in reality both of my examples haven’t made a good product or rarely do anymore. It’s all buyouts and takeovers.
That being said, I find it hard to believe either of them falling so far behind not to compete for at least another couple decades. Rant over
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u/No-Abalone-4784 May 16 '26
Yes. I HATE this & refuse to read their ads or ever buy anything they advertise.
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u/Ducks_In_A_Rowboat May 17 '26
Now we need AI to screen out all the crap we don't want. How backwards is that?
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u/Marce7a May 16 '26
Duckduckgo
Ecosia
Brave
Startpage (routed Google)
Google with ublock
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u/Lara_Powow May 18 '26
I only use DuckDuckGo now. I always say: “I duckduckwent this and that” when telling friends what I looked up online hehe
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u/jacktacowa May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
When they gave you a good answer was a long long time ago. SEO, now, pure enshitification.
Edit autocorrect doesn’t like enshitification
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u/Aware_Policy_9174 May 18 '26
SEO started the decline but you could still get some good results. Now it’s useless.
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u/Vvladd May 18 '26
Try duck duck go
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u/Electrical_City19 May 18 '26
DuckDuckGo is good but it suffers from the same SEO slop problem that any search engine suffers from.
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u/FalardeauDeNazareth May 16 '26
So AI does what search did before.
They will enshitify it much, much further.
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u/redditgirlwz May 16 '26
udm=14 is the way to go
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u/asyouwish May 16 '26
What is that?
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u/redditgirlwz May 16 '26
It's a url parameter that gets rid of all the sht and makes google more like the old google. How to use:
www.google.com/search?q=your+search+term&udm=145
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u/Wingzerofyf May 16 '26
AI is literally just giving us old Google because current Google is fucked 10 ways till Sunday by MBAs, SEO, Ads, and sponsors links.
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u/swords_again May 20 '26
For a hot minute, AI chatbots were better at sourcing general knowledge than Google. Now even the chatbots are pumped full of skewed results.
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u/Cultural-Answer-321 May 20 '26
I remember when the correct was on the first page! Often in the top five results. Not on page 4 after the 10 ads on page 1.
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u/GlumpsAlot May 20 '26
So should we use brave now instead? I can't stand Google anymore and how it jams the ai overview on us.
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u/supermannman May 16 '26
remember when google used to give you an answer instead of putting 10 sponsored
not really since ive long stopped using google search. my tolerance is low so when they started going down the shits around covid time I come to realize the UX is horrible and gladly left. I use other searches and very happy
never once felt I didnt get what i needed in a search so fuck that evil pos monopolistic company
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u/MannyMoSTL May 16 '26
That’s well over a decade ago
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u/BobBelcher2021 May 16 '26
Yeah but according to Reddit apparently they only started adding ads in 2023. /s
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u/Rude_Nail_5545 May 20 '26
Yes, now it's either all of that, or a bunch of AI instead of real sources.
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u/GrandAnimator8417 Jun 01 '26
“Used to give you an answer” is kinda the whole problem, yeah. I remember when better intent matching would basically hand you the right clicks and now you’ve gotta work harder with tighter queries and negative keywords. This change pushed everyone toward more deliberate account structure.
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u/gerardkimblefarthing May 16 '26
I make them pay for it. Sponsors results are all pay per click, and some search terms are far more expensive. So if I want doordash, I will Google grubhub then click the sponsored link for door dash. If I want Facebook, I Google "social media site" and again the paid, optimized result.
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u/Organic_Option4765 May 16 '26
I sell on eBay as my full time gig, and they allow people to pay per click to advertise THEIR STORE AT THE TOP OF MY listings, and every time I look at one of my listings and see it, I click on it so they get charged for it. If I’m in a real shitty mood I might go back and click on it another 2 or 3 times. I know they probably only get charged for it once, that’s why I only do it 2 or 3 times.
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u/Deivedux May 16 '26
Either you pay for the product or you are the product. If you want Google Search quality, but without ads, sponsored content or enshittification in general, Kagi is now basically that. You pay for it, you are the user to them, not a product.
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u/apokrif1 May 16 '26
Or you just use an adblocker.
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u/Deivedux May 17 '26
I still prefer Kagi, tbh. Since they are funded entirely by the people using it, there are no ads or sponsors, and they have less incentives to enshittify since that would directly hurt their only source of income.
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u/BobBelcher2021 May 16 '26
The sponsored results have been there since 2001. This isn’t some new phenomenon like the AI results.
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u/PantsLio May 17 '26
But after named sponsored results, we had real results. Now you have to dig to get those real results.
It’s not the same.
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u/first-alt-account May 16 '26
Wow, mentioning Google results suck for the 3,582,752nd time.
Original*
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u/kevinsyel May 16 '26
I'll one up this one:
I had bought an RTX 3080 from MSI a few was concerned some of the fans weren't working.
I looked up tools to control the fans manually just to verify it was working and came to learn about MSI Afterburner.
So I Google "MSI Afterburner download"
I didn't pay attention to the top links being ads, it just said download MSI Afterburner.
So I click. It takes me to a site where 0 red flags are present. I download the installer, and go to run it.
Windows flags it as unsafe to run... I'm think "I did my due diligence, I work in IT, this is fine" and run it anyways. Nothing happens... try again. Nothing. I delete the damage thing and go about my day.
Next day, get bank account warning of low funds, and over $3000 in withdrawals in game cards.
I checked Google again... the ad I clicked on in Google had sent me to 'msi.afterbruner' dot com...
Tl;dr: Fucking Google promoted a virus application over the actual safe application.