comment: >
  
  Duckduckgo is a great alternative
context: I'm actually literally curious what happened to make it worse. The sponsored results thing makes sense, but I don't think that's all of it. >
  
  Google, like most big tech companies, have been adding more and more moderation on what people can see over time. This started out with pretty reasonable things, like blocking porn on most queries, but they are also trying to promote who they believe are authoritative sources are. There are a lot of problems with this approach, but it will bias the results of their queries.
  There is too much data in the world for Google to curate everything, and they depend heavily on AI systems to do the heavy lifting. Any bias in the training sets, intentional or not, will result in it being replicated consistently in the algorithm; and often have unexpected results. In an attempt to down rank Russia today compared to CNN their algorithm might pinpoint that content from Russia Today uses "cannot" instead of "can't" more often and all articles across the web that use "cannot" will subsequently be determined to be less authoritative.
  The more google (and other search engines) try to censor results the worse their results will become. There is a practical limit to how much curation is good, and after that the curation become a barrier to finding the results you actually want. >
  
  This is really interesting, thanks! >
  
  I switched to Brave and only use Google in the rare cases I don't find what I need immediately. Google feels more like an advertising company than a tech company at this point. >
  
  Does brave remove sponsor links? Do you use the brave search engine or google inside brave browser? I'm legit curious because I want to make the switch too. >
  
  I haven't noticed anything like that but I do use an adblock so that's possibly the reason. >
  
  It has alot to do with search engine optimisation which wasn’t practiced much in the early days but is now being used by crappy/not relevant sites to flood whatever search terms you try to come up with
  Google is the most affected as its the most used engine with it‘s algorithm being analysed the most
  I personally use yandex even though its owned by a Russian company and likely spies on you just as much as google but its legitimately the only search engine I’ve found that will show me what I’m looking for
  I’ve tried duck duck go and a whole bunch of other engines most people have never heard of and almost none of them satisfy me >
  
  Use an ad-blocker like uBlock Origin and the sponsor links will stop showing up. >
  
  I already do but the search quality is still sub par >
  
  It's absolutely the best for me. I still mostly use DuckDuckGo because I dislike Google and its monopoly, but whenever DuckDuckGo doesn't deliver I go to Google and it's always better, despite me not being logged in. >
  
  It's because the internet has gone more and more up its own ass. >
  
  It's now political/social re-education based on multiple leaks from Google staff. They're taking their personal views which are not diverse whatsoever, and shaping the results to gaslight the world to believing the same. Throw in cooperating with governments to censor (that we know of). I wouldnt put it past them to share information with governments for nefarious purposes based on what we do know about them. >
  
  Yeah, it's a problem.
  It's the same with youtube too, you literally cannot get more than 5-10 search results, then it gives you random "popular" shit, things from your watch history, and subscriptions; then it loops. You're lucky if it gives you what you were looking for anyway. Home page? More like watched+popular page.
  I'm sorry, what idiot decided it was a good idea? Let me browse 10000+pages of search results in peace if I want, lol :')
  At least it made me quit watching youtube, I just listen to podcasts on hikes/walks now. >
  
  Google works well for ads and 'lowest common denominator' type of searches. It sucks if you are looking for something specific. >
  
  I stopped using Google a couple years ago, aside from YouTube. As a search engine, there's nothing outstanding about Google that sets it apart from Yahoo and Bing. It's great, but nothing special. DuckDuckGo is my engine of choice these days. It's a fine search engine.