Took me a while to understand what "using Google to download software" means. Was there a hidden functionality I wasn't aware of? Turns out, what they mean is "don't use Google to search for software you wish to download".
I think the reality is more like "when you search for software on Google do not use links in the ads that you get at top of the results".
Though of course there may well be "normal" results leading to shady sites, the issue talked about is related to advertisement results.
If I didn't know any better, I would think about suing Google for boosting malware spread x)
As an aside, I'm always suspicious of free utilities being downloadable from well-designed hosting websites, such as www.fosshub.com. I'm less suspicious downloading it from a very basic, almost plain text web page, for whatever reason.
Then I read this and realized I have not seen those google search ads in years unless I'm setting up a new machine. I always found the 8 ads before results to be absolutely evil and now its causing real damage.
[1] https://www.chip.de/news/Vorsicht-bei-Windows-11-und-VLC-Fak...
Classic clickbait tactics. That was intentional, it made you click the link.
Putting the keyword "download" after the name of software, ebooks, or music will lead into weird websites that distribute malware, and they rank very high.
I just tried searching for an old Game Programming book I happen to have. There's two piracy sites, then one site with a "Download" button that gives me a DMG with an executable. Those are above Archive.org, the official github repo of the book and the official website.
For music download, I searched some Bowie. There's Amazon... plus a few pages of of weird websites that I have no idea what they are, but look like "paid piracy", they either ask for credit card or give me a DMG which supposedly has a downloader.
For software I searched the one I made by the company I work at. There's stuff like Filehorse, Softonic (I don't even know if they're legit), then there's a few which look like those aggregators but end up giving you malware when downloading.
That's with ads blocked, and subscription to several lists.
In the end IMO this is terrible for small businesses, people will end up distrusting anything that's not Amazon or anything that they try to search organically, or they'll get malware.
piracy is a known vector for distributing malware.
this is more for general searches or software with no paid option.
google should deindex scam sites, but this is easier said than done. however they should NEVER have paid ads for malware as they're directly profiting from malware
Installing an ad blocker does not solve the problem. At best it hides the problem.
The issue here is you're looking at this as a 'you' problem and not an 'everyone' problem. If you block ads that's not a problem. When everyone does it Google will change how the page renders in such a manner that your adblocker is worthless. And then you're back to it being a you problem. You cannot disentangle the search and the ads any more than you can disentangle being human and needing oxygen to survive.