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Comment by lukev | Hacker News Reader

Google has clearly transitioned away from prioritizing customer value (and content creator value, unless you're an advertiser) in favor of some internal opaque KPIs.

After switching to DuckDuckGo years ago, and Kagi last year, it's obvious every time I go back to Google how much they have lost the plot.

It'll take another decade before they lose dominance, but the writing is on the wall. Inertia and market position are the only reason they're still on top. Meanwhile, the younger generation barely uses web search, and the tech savvy are starting to drain away more and more quickly.

Startups should be excited. Rather than being the 800-lb gorilla that is going to come take your lunch, Google is the walking dead behemoth waiting to be harvested for conceptual parts.

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Seriously ! after switching to Kagi along with recent annoying changes to Google search last 2 years , the switch back to google unimaginable.

Recently I realized that i only !g to google from kagi just a handful of times this year and every time to instant regret .

A marked contrast to couple of years back with DDG !g would instinctive and probably half the time and results felt better in google . Sticking with DDG felt idealistic and the quality second class, not so with Kagi, it feels the $10 pays off every month in much improved productivity.

It is to be noted that Kagi uses google search index as a source, so it is not like Google cannot improve the results or UX technically, just not possible institutionally.

Meanwhile, the younger generation barely uses web search

I might be a little out of touch, but what do they do instead?

Social media.

A significant amount also use ChatGPT.

They use the search box in Telegram, Tiktok, Whatsapp, Wechat, etc.

I tried several times to find some specific reel I saw in Instagram and had a really poor experience. Results were not only what I was looking for, but seemingly off-topic completely. Understandably, video content is harder to index if author does not put effort to give more context.

I wonder about that as well.

Perhaps they are easily distracted and forget what they were searching for in the first place, because they're presented with a shiny object?

Google's customers are advertisers. Customers are the people who pay you money. Consumers are just the product.

google was always by far the best search engine compared to the competition, so data harvesting, advertising etc were accepted costs of doing business. now search engines all suck with the advent of seo, ai pollution, and enshittification - so there is no longer an overwhelming benefit to using google. interesting to witness control slip from a behemoth.

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