So...we're back to 1999 when the first 10 choices are paid ads?
Also there is a HUGE difference in ad quality between the old pay for placement guys and Google. On Google, your ad has to be relevant and will be downranked into oblivion if nobody clicks on it. On Overture and the rest of them, that was not the case, they just auctioned off the results without regard to whether any of it was relevant. I know some of you refuse to believe this, but Google search ads are themselves a corpus of documents that are responsive to the user's search term.
FWIW, this site is down about 2-3 screenfuls in Google, well below the fold, so Google isn't blameless here. The results above it are a sports onebox, news universal, and Twitter highlights, though, all about the Yankees/Phillies game tonight, so arguably they are showing what users actually are most likely to want to see.
There was a brief moment in history where we could get concise and efficient answers to any question we had.
Now we need to harness the computing power of an LLM to get something remotely similar…and it’s still inherently worse.
at least with a page full of search results I can compare and weed out misleading or garbage results
With an LLM the users are now just taking whatever they get as the truth. Never realizing LLMs are not designed to be accurate.
Google is charging money on other people's brands.
This wouldn't be a problem if there were ten popular search engines, or if portals were still popular and there were ten popular portals.
But what Google has done is gross monopolistic misconduct.
They've "removed the URL bar" and turned it into a search bar. They've put their browser on all devices and made it the default. They've made Google search the default. They've destroyed the ad blocker.
Now, when I search for a brand, I see an ad that looks like an official result in first place.
iPhone -> paid ad
Nike -> paid ad
Midjourney -> paid ad
These are companies' hard earned brands, and yet Google is collecting rent on them.
Google is taxing the entire internet. This ought to be illegal.
Google deserves to be broken up.
No, but they are, with ever increasing accuracy, the web.
You use Chrome and Google, and both are interfering with that process. They're sticking themselves in the middle of that transaction and neither you nor Best Buy want them there.