cross-posted from !google@lemdro.id
- Google may be altering billions of search queries daily to generate results that increase purchases.
- Testimony in an antitrust case revealed an internal Google slide about changes to its search algorithm, involving “semantic matching” to generate more commercial results.
- Google covertly changes user queries, substituting them with ones that generate more revenue for the company and display shopping-oriented results.
- This manipulation benefits Google’s profits but harms search quality and raises advertiser costs.
- Despite legal challenges, Google’s market dominance allows it to continue these practices, impacting users’ ability to access unbiased information.
Have you tried Kagi? It’s a paid service (which is good for people that don’t like ads) and the results seem pretty good. They have a trial plan where you can do 100 searches. Where possible, it prioritises small sites that don’t always appear in Google results at all, and it has far less SEO spam than Google.
I really need to try them and see how many searches I actually use. Even their higher paid tiers seem like way too few searches to me. But I have no actual idea.
I would have agreed in the past, but they have an unlimited plan for $10/month now, which is why I’m more interested.
I get that search is expensive to run, but $120 USD/yr is a lot.
Maybe it’s worth cancelling something to pay for it, but idk. I won’t even look at metered tiers. Knowing my scarcity aversion, I’d never use it. I didn’t use a single Neeva trial search since I was hoarding them like Max Ethers from Final Fantasy.
That’s $120/yr is worth less to me than my privacy and desire to decouple from google tbh
Yeah. It’s definitely expensive, which is why I haven’t signed up for a subscription yet. Still thinking about it.
Thank you for the recommendation, if a product delivers what i expect for it’s price I’m gonna be using it. The trial searches will hopefully help me evaluate that