• MattEnglish
    0•11 months ago

    This is my take too - Google Search and YouTube especially which are owned by Google.

    Even if Chrome had like 5% market share, surely they could just push this anyway? While the Chromium monopoly is partially to blame for this, I’d argue the centralisation of the web is as well.

    Sure, “Google Search is useless now, you can’t find what you want!”, but the vast, vast majority of people still and continue to use it, and nothing will change that most likely.

    • @kava@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1•11 months ago

      Google search isn’t useless. It’s getting worse but still Google is the best search. For a lot of general searches, Duckduckgo and Kagi have been sufficient for me. “What year did WW2 end” “what is the population of Crimea” “north Korean famine 1990s”

      But for example I had a picture of a specific motor an employee sent me that I had to find a replacement for online. It’s a niche motor we use for a large air compressor. All I had was some model / serial numbers. I tried plugging in different variations of the numbers and “motor” into both Duckduckgo and Kagi with no luck.

      On Google, the first result was a PDF of a Honda motor guide that had every single niche Honda motor and I was able to find the model name of the exact motor I needed, which allowed me to find a viable replacement on Ebay.

      It hurts me to say it, but the other web searches still haven’t reached total parity with Google. I use Duckduckgo as my primary and then when it doesn’t find me what I need, I go to Google.

      I would use Kagi but after it couldn’t find me the engine, I stopped paying my monthly subscription. Until then I was happy with it, but if I’m paying for a service and it isn’t any better than the free options…