Total garbage search results, even for simple tech search terms
Trying to remember when I changed my home page from AltaVista to google. Soon after they moved to Page Mill Rd in 1999 I think. Because their search results were so much better. More useful. I know I drove past the AltaVista office on Arastredero in early 2000 thinking, well they are finished.
And so it was for the next 20 plus years until about two years ago. When I changed my home page to duckduckgo. Not because of any ideological or privacy reasons. But because Google search could not longer return useful search results for even very well formed search terms for technical references. Which duckduckgo could. We are talking very basic stuff. Like the JVM opcode spec.
Its improved a bit recently but Google search has been broken so badly by their "AI" push as to make it mostly useless. The experience is even worse on mobile platforms. If a search term might have even the most cursory connection with a retail item or a search term that can be sold or is in any way "political" the results returned on the first few pages of a google search are as bad as the very early search engines of the late 1990's. (Apart from AltaVista). Totally useless.
That third rate mechanical engineer Pichai (but epic player of C-suite politics) with his dodgy degrees has utterly destroyed Google. He promotes mediocrities like himself and has turned Mountain View into the worst sort of echo chamber. The profoundly racist Gemini fiasco is the first time I have seen Google screw up so badly. The Alphabet anti-trust defense only works when you have a generally positive public attitude towards your company. Pichai like all upper caste Indians is totally tone deaf to the fact that the US is build on neighborly good will and his BJP worldview as reflected in Gemini and other recent PR disasters shows nothing put contempt for the country that made him powerful and wealthy. For which there will be a reckoning on day . Not the first upper caste Indian in the Valley to make that mistake.
If Larry and Sergey want to save Google they need to kick out Pichai and his incompetent crew as soon as possible. Because unlike HP (destroyed after Bill Hewlett left) and Boeing (destroyed by the McDonnell Douglass people) Googles eventual fate with be just like AT&T in the 1970's. Destroy by hubris.
A real pity. Because up to the last 5 years or so Google had done such a great job of being a force for good who produced so much useful and innovative technology. Like Sun, DEC and pre 1997 Apple. And are now becoming arrogant, nasty, feckless and outright evil. Like Microsoft since 1975, Apple since 1997, and Intel and Cisco forever. A real pity. Because all my dealings with the Googleplex in the old days were more like dealing with Sony. Very bright people who did not give you the run around, did not try to screw you over, and who were a pleasure to deal with.
Oh well. It was great while it lasted.