> putting search results back at the top of search results
Watching Google slowly fill more and more of the search results with ads, this is an obvious and very welcome idea.
Watching Google slowly fill more and more of the search results with ads, this is an obvious and very welcome idea.
I haven't seen an advertisement in 10+ years. I don't really understand why anyone chooses to see them when they don't have to.
And sorry if this comes off as confrontational, I just see so many people talking about advertisements and it's difficult to have to tell each individual that adblocking extensions have existed for close to 15 years [2]. I wish there was some better way to spread this information so no one would have to see ads or comment about their existence ever again. The internet is so much better without them.
None of the choices of content blockers in Safari successfully block the majority of ads on the internet.
Furthermore, it's not just about the surfaced ads. Even if you use uBlockOrigin, search engines like Google optimize for ad clicking, which will affect the search result ranking even if you have ads blocked. As a result, search quality has been steadily decreasing over the past decade (there have been hundreds of highly ranked HN discussions on this in the past).
Finally, uBlockOrigin is an amazing tool developed by 1 person. There is always the chance that, in the future, there are developments in browsers or ad-serving technologies that render it obsolete (e.g if Google decides to make a breaking change to the Chrome Extension API, like Safari did). In that case, it would be worthwhile to have alternatives.
As to the search quality decrease, that's definitely more of a reason to desire an alternative than seeing ads is.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/25/apple-will-let-you-port-go...
The first is punative. While it does, kind of, punish bad behavior, it doesn't go far enough. You may deprive Google of some small revenue, but you're still giving them a lot that contributes to their bottom line. They can still claim a googol of clicks and eyeballs, etc. People will still see them as the end-all-be-all, and voluntarily submit their sites to google's attention--ignoring any other options.
The second is the failure to reward. It is not enough to kill off bad actors if you haven't nurtured good actors to take their place.
In this case, the good actor could even be Google. If there are efforts to do things differently, we should find the ones we like and reward them. They will benefit and their competition will observe and imitate.
It didn't to me. I use ublock and take it a step further to use other search engines. Personally, I only notice how ad filled Google search is when I use someone else's computer.