back to article Guide for the perplexed – Google is no longer the best search engine

Perplexity offers several advantages over Google as a search engine, making it a compelling alternative for many. Back in the 1970s, when this columnist was a happy teenage graduate student, I started my first business: Researchers at Large. I was one of the first people to make a living by being able to get answers from early …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

    There was a brilliant article by an occasional contributor about monopolies and how they aren't always bad for the consumer.

    In particular, Google was mentioned.

    The TL;DR was that having a monopoly means a company is forced to keep innovating, or it will lose out to that do.

    Google chose not to innovate (which is synonymous with invest) and decided to milk the goose.

    "Not a tear, no not I" as Bono once sang.

    1. Helcat Silver badge

      Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

      Yup - we had a speech on this a few years ago: We need to maintain our momentum else we might as well close our doors and look for other work. So it's not just the tech industry: It's all industry.

      The problem with monopolies is their competition is so far behind, it's easy to become complacent, and with that you lose momentum, and face stagnation. Meanwhile the competition has a clear path to follow, and can more easily build momentum and so will quickly catch up and pass the leader.

      Flip side: If there's close competition, there's a heck of a lot of motivation to keep innovating.

      1. john.w

        Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

        The problem for the monopoly or any big business is that all those small companies snapping at their heels have a lot less to loose. Taking risks on new innovations is easier when you are small. If you have 50,000 employees going bust and starting again is not as easy as if you have 50.

        Governments deciding what technology they want to succeed is even worse. It distorts the process of innovation and industries fail, just look at the European and US car industries as consumers' desire to buy EVs to meet ZEV targets has failed to materialise.

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

          "Governments deciding what technology they want to succeed is even worse"

          It's not as if industry has a better track record when it comes to deciding which horse to back

          In the end the "good enough" one has almost always won out despite mandates for the "perfect" (or more frequently, the "more convenient/profitable")

          Google signed its own long-term death warrant by taking on the poison pill of Doubleclick. The reverse takeover which ensued was fairly predictable and set the stage for it to start stagnating

          1. Sam 15

            Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

            "Governments deciding what technology they want to succeed is even worse"

            "It's not as if industry has a better track record when it comes to deciding which horse to back"

            "Industry" is not a monolith.

            Different companies can choose to back different horses, and someone will succeed.

            When Governments order every company to climb on the same horse, there is a special problem.

          2. Speeddymon

            Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

            I wondered when I saw Google but Doubleclick if that wasn't going to happen. That was over 20 years ago now and I think it's safe to say you're exactly right.

        2. Sherrie Ludwig

          Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

          If you have 50,000 employees going bust and starting again is not as easy as if you have 50.

          More like: If you have stockholders screaming for your head at any dip in profits, it is hard to justify spending anything on (not immediately) profitable R & D.

          1. eionmac

            Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

            Only family or privately owned and deep funded businesses [*1] can really take a long term view, as the owners are not always 'this year's dividend amount' driven. They can look to the long view for results, provided they can cover their annual expenses.

            [*1] Chinese government companies or government supervised companies can always take the long view provided it meets party requirements.

        3. hammarbtyp

          Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

          "Governments deciding what technology they want to succeed is even worse. It distorts the process of innovation and industries fail, just look at the European and US car industries as consumers' desire to buy EVs to meet ZEV targets has failed to materialize."

          Another from the Ann Rand school of economics. Lets just leave everything to capitalism and we'll be OK.

          Problem with that is that industries outlook tends to be very short term, often not much further than the next profit statement, however something's like infrastructure takes decades to install and won't so any returns until completed. The 2nd issue is all those competing standards are inefficient. Separate EV charging networks, multiple phone masts, competing standards. It needs someone to bang the heads together and create national or global standard. Industries are not going to do this, because for them creating their own standard and maintaining the monopoly is in their best interests.

          then their is the motivations. Generally industry it is about profit and shareholder value. If it cheaper to pollute than the cost of clean up, that is what they will do. There has to be someone looking out the larger best interest of society.

          There is a balance between capitalism and government planning. Go to far either way and it is a problem, but the idea you can do without either is a fairy story libertarians and communists tell their kids at night

          1. Long John Silver
            Pirate

            Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

            Ayn Rand's muddy philosophising appeals to people unwilling to acknowledge that human societies entail an interdependence of individuals.

            1. MrBanana

              Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

              Upvote for "muddy philosophising" - God that book was a turgid read.

            2. Ian Johnston Silver badge

              Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

              To silly children, basically.

          2. MachDiamond Silver badge

            Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

            "Generally industry it is about profit and shareholder value. "

            This can be especially true if the shareholders are corporate execs with a compensation plan heavily slanted towards stock options. They are in a position to do the things that can boost stock price in the short term and many companies will sacrifice their execs at every downturn so a five year plan can be suicidal financially for the exec. Long term planning gets discouraged and it's more important to gather as much compensation as quickly as possible before moving on. A small founder-operated business can often be run with an eye towards the long term health of the business. It's not even about growth since infinite growth isn't possible. Many of the stocks my family trust holds are just such companies. They earn a solid profit year over year and pay a good dividend. Far better than bank savings.

        4. ianbetteridge

          Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

          "Governments deciding what technology they want to succeed is even worse"

          Let me introduce you to the entire history of capitalism, in which governments have been doing exactly this almost since the invention of the spinning jenny.

        5. bombastic bob Silver badge
          Megaphone

          Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

          "Governments deciding what technology they want to succeed is even worse"

          Gummints picking the winners and losers, whether from lobbyist favors/kickbacks, the tax code, a political agenda driving regulation/legislation, or OUTRIGHT CORPORATE WELFARE, *IS* the heart of corruption in ANY government at ANY level, and the OPPPOSITE of free-market capitalism.

          It is *THE* worst!

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

        "The problem with monopolies is their competition is so far behind, it's easy to become complacent, and with that you lose momentum, and face stagnation."

        Stagnation would have been OK. It's the enshittification that comes with prioritising vendors' self-interest over customers' requirements that's the problem.

    2. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

      Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

      Google did innovate... to improve short term revenue. They innovated so far in that direction that they created an opportunity for others focused on search result quality to gain users. Users are the product, not search results. When Perplexity has sufficient users to sell they will have to make choices about how much quality to sacrifice to get the ad revenue required to satisfy investors. Perhaps they could increase ad revenue by trimming down the LLM generated answer while leaving the links to source material in place. When that is not enough they will follow Google's example and we will be looking for Perplexity's replacement.

      1. hh121

        Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

        I have no idea of the details of how Perplexity works, and I agree with the premise of the OP, but I suspect/guess that a search based on an LLM is going to be massively difficult/expensive to keep the model current, regenerating or integrating all the growth of internet content every day. Or don't and it will drift into irrelevance as the model gets further and further out of date. Which might be fine if your question isn't related to time critical data, but plenty will be. Whether that's harder to do for an LLM versus a search engine would be interesting to get my head around.

        1. O'Reg Inalsin

          Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

          Perplexity is another money losing startup running on engagement prospects. They are funded by Amazon, mostly. Within a couple of weeks of Perplexity getting traction, Google copied the Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) paradigm and started giving references with the search results. Prior to that the emphasis had been on making AI-search the "last stop" for users, assuming they would become completely dependent on AI-search for all their knowledge needs, so adding references was positively rejected as not in Googles interest.

    3. vtcodger Silver badge

      Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

      I disagree somewhat. As does the article BTW. Google's problem doesn't seem to be so much lack of innovation as letting the marketing folks take over the results page with somewhat profitable, but dubiously helpful to the user, sponsored crap. (Enshitfication as Cory Doctorow would have it).

      Strictly speaking, that's kind of innovative. But it's perhaps also kind of dumb.

      1. chuckamok

        Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

        "Innovation" has been hijacked, as was "Creative".

    4. deadlockvictim

      Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

      AC» There was a brilliant article by an occasional contributor about monopolies and how they aren't always bad for the consumer.

      The problem with monopolies in a capitalist world is that the purpose of a corporation is to make money for shareholders and senior management will take their cut too.

      Providing a decent service is merely a means to this end. It is not the raison d'etre of the corporation.

      Once monopoly (or even near monopoly) status has been reached, the end-users & customers can be milked for all that they are worth.

      And is service suffers, then service suffers.

      1. collinsl Silver badge

        Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

        > And is service suffers, then service suffers.

        See also: Microsoft

    5. Randy Hudson

      Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

      > ... forced to keep innovating, or it will lose out to that do

      Dude, a monopoly means there is nobody else. There's no way to enter the space, so innovation is stifled

      1. 96percentchimp

        Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

        Economists typically consider a monopoly to be any entity that owns more than a third of the market with no competitor of a similar scale, since this typically enables the dominant player to destroy promising upstarts through tactics like undercutting them until they run out of cash, or buying them to own/bury whatever innovation made them a threat.

        1. nobody who matters Silver badge

          Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

          I have a feeling that many of the commentards around here have their own idea what they typically consider about economists ;)

    6. Fr. Ted Crilly Silver badge

      Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

      Working out well for Boeing at the moment in the 150-200 seat aircraft market, fail to actually start a new design 30 years ago because 'profit reasons' and here we are eh...

    7. The Dogs Meevonks Silver badge

      Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

      Monopolies are usually short lived... and tech moves so fast, whilst users are so fickle and easily distracted by the 'new shiny' that those monopolies lifespans are getting shorter and shorter.

      I've seen this coming for years, everything about the whole internet has become enshitified, it's not just search... it's everything. Every service, every app... it all exists for one purpose only now... to serve you ads... to harvest every scrap of personal data you willingly give them to sell to anyone who wants it.

      You are no longer a user, you are a product... your being consumed whilst you consume.

      The only way to win is not to play.

      I do my best to render any data collection as worthless as possible, I block as much as I can, I disable as much telemetry as I can. I can't stop it all, but I can render a lot of it worthless... noise within other noise. My browser (firefox) is set to randomly change what it reports it is and what OS it is on with a plugin called user agent switcher, noscript, privacy badger, ublock origin, a VPN, hosts file and hoping to add a pihole in the new year (guess what I've asked for).

      I don't install any apps on my phone that aren't essential.. no games, no social media aside from mastodon and a couple of messaging apps, a couple of retail and banking apps... and that's pretty much it. I use duckduckgo as my search along with the app tracking protection and a duck email address for all sign ups.

      Windows 10 pro with OOSU10 to disable as much of the spyware as possible.

      I don't want to play anymore... actually... I've never wanted to play. I will do everything in my power to thwart these greedy, insidious arseholes from my life.

      1. HT7777
        Thumb Up

        Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

        "I don't want to play anymore... actually... I've never wanted to play. I will do everything in my power to thwart these greedy, insidious arseholes from my life."

        Bravo and ditto.

        I use several of those blocking tactics too. Additionally I use pi-hole - which is great.

        My preferred tactic is to compartmentalise via vritualisation. I have separate VM's for news, shopping, banking and other activities. Some of them are via a VPN. Also using a variety of browers with preference given to Librewolf, Firefox and Brave.

        As an aside I loathe the creeping insistence that I should receive HTML formatted email. I specifically use a text based email client to avoid the malware vector HTML facilitates. I use Forte Agent for anyone who might be interested.

        .

      2. ianbetteridge

        Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

        "Monopolies are usually short lived..."

        Bell Telephone was effectively a monopoly for over 70 years, and regulated as such from the Kingsbury Commitment in 1913 to the break-up of AT&T in 1984. Monopolies are only short-lived if there is the political will to act against them because there are few economic forces which will knock a monopoly off its perch in any kind of short order.

        1. The Dogs Meevonks Silver badge

          Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

          I can't speak for the US as I'm in the UK... and I'm talking about monopolies in a free market. Here in the UK British Telecom had the monopoly on phones too for a similar amount of time... Funded in part by taxpayers to build out the infrastructure and was originally operated by the Post Office.

          But then again, I've never considered the USA as democratic or a free market... it's a perverse corruption of capitalism that's been taken to such an extreme that it only promotes greed and profit over anything else... including the lives of the people... every single aspect of human existence is for the profit of the few over the suffering of the many there... at least that's how it exists to me in my 45yrs on this planet.

          Anything that benefits the people is evil socialism and to fought as commie ideals, the people exist to serve the will and whims of their masters... always have.

    8. tokai

      Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

      Famously Facebook used to tell new employees: "Your job is to destroy Facebook before someone else does"

      (This was re. the importance of innovation, but I'm sure there's another joke there somewhere)

    9. big_D Silver badge

      Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

      Google have constantly innovated on their monopoly, spending millions in bribes to government to keep them from looking too hard in their direction, in keeping competitors at bay and too small to worry about, by paying platforms to use Google as the default search engine etc.

      But this is a competitor that didn't come up through the ranks of traditional search, this AI is something that crept up alongside them, hidden from view, then leapt out at them and shouted BUUH!

    10. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Pirate

      Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

      When I compare Grok (over on X, which is now free to all users) I get REAL results quickly, when Google and even DuckDuckGo led me down a lot of dead-end rabbit holes [partially due to it being a Win32 programming question, the predominance of Stack Overflow and it typically NOT helping, and being the kind of "GDI world transform" problem hardly anyone wants to deal with]. So instead of getting circle-jerked by Micros~1's own API documentation, Grok SUMMARIZED the entire issue by LOCATING SOME OBVIOUS Micros~1 SAMPLE CODE that demonstrated EXACTLY what I needed to know, a feature that the OLD MSDN DOCS (prior to 2012, before it went "all online") did MUCH BETTER in my opinion, but I got there EVEN FASTER due to Grok [thanks, Elon!].

      It's probably NOT necessary to point out the APPARENT LACK OF ALGORITHMIC BIAS in Grok [you won't see woke-biased 'race placement' in an AI generated image of George Washington as far as I can tell, unless you ask for it], but I mention it anyway. And I have generally avoided google for a while now, MOSTLY because of TRACKING and ALGORITHMIC BIAS, ONLY doing google searches when DuckDuckGo searches aren't working well enough. And I doubt I'll be using ChatGPT or any of the others any time soon, for similar reasons. Still, DuckDuckGo (and I suppose Google) would still work for a lot of things where I get results that are useful on the first 2 pages. [the "site:" feature is the most useful feature I use to weed out MOST of the crap]

      Oh, and Grok DOES LET ME SEE THE 15 PAGES ITS ALGORITHM FOUND... [at least as far as I can tell, correct me if I'm wrong please]

      (yeah that wish was mentioned in the article, GOOD POINT by the way)

      PIRATE Icon for the obvious reason.

  2. Roj Blake Silver badge

    You can even sign in...

    ...using your Google account!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: You can even sign in...

      Sod that for a game of soldiers. no way in hell. The same goes for an MS account.

      People.... stop giving them your life and everything. avoid like the plague.

      1. Filippo Silver badge

        Re: You can even sign in...

        I have a Google account, for Google stuff. I never use it to sign in to anything else. I have an account for each service, and a password manager. It's not hard at all.

        1. Phones Sheridan Silver badge

          Re: You can even sign in...

          It's not very hard now, but it will get harder. Our latest quote for cyber insurance states a clause that we must use either Google or Microsoft accounts for user authentication. It looks like the pair has successfully lobbied the insurance industry, that true security comes from having M365 or Google Apps.

          We're looking elsewhere for insurance, but you can bet that once one does, the others will start to follow.

          1. ttlanhil

            Re: You can even sign in...

            It might not have even needed much lobbying - the insurance industry likes being able to quantify risks, and Google/MS authentication is a reasonably well known and predictable risk level for them.

            And there's a lot of work that goes into securing auth on those platforms - certainly there are problems, but even specialists like Okta have had breaches, so I can understand that viewpoint

        2. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: You can even sign in...

          "It's not hard at all."

          For logins, yes. The problem I've been seeing is companies creating new software that rides on the back of Google API's, Chrome and requiring a Google account to work. One such piece of software has been hard to find a replacement for so I've picked up a tiny PC that runs Chrome OS and a Chrome browser completely separate from every other computer in my office. It's not a perfect solution, but it does stop the Alpha's from getting through, a few of the Beta's, but not the Gammas that really have me worried.

    2. MyffyW Silver badge

      Re: You can even sign in...

      But unless you wanted Servalan to be hot on your heels you would be wise not to use your Google account in that way.

      Just looked at Perplexity and I'll be honest it came back with the same AI hallucinations and inaccuracies as ever. I don't need the original source to tell me that Madrid is not in the UK, but Perplexity suggested it was.

      1. milliemoo83

        Re: You can even sign in...

        "Servalan"

        Mine's the one with the Liberator and a pocket Orac.

    3. The Dogs Meevonks Silver badge

      Re: You can even sign in...

      if an account is required for a service... it's signed up for using my duck email address which strips out all of the tracking crap before being forwarded on to me.

      1. Hubert Cumberdale Silver badge

        Re: You can even sign in...

        Get Tuta. All remote image loading (and therefore tracking) is disabled by default, but you can turn it back on with a click if you want to. You can also enable it for specific senders. With your own domain, you can also invent a new email address (e.g., perplexity@mydomain.com) for everything you sign up for with a catch-all inbox, meaning that if you get any spam, you'll be able to know exactly where your address leaked from (and you can also just send everything pointing to that email directly to spam if you like). I have so little spam now (nearly none) I'm almost confused by it.

    4. David G from Visalia

      Re: You can even sign in...

      I actually deleted my Google account a few weeks ago, no _I_ cannot. ;-)

      I wouldn't mind paying them for their Pro option, but $20 per month is too high. I think I would be willing to pay $5 per month, though, if it turns out well. My very first query was _of course_ "How do I add Perplexity AI as my Firefox search engine?"

  3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Oh, it will give me what it "thinks" is the answer I'm looking for and - very kind of it - it's sources. Nope. When I search I'm not looking for an AI double-guessing engine. Search has already become a welter of double-guessing engines. It's not a summary I'm looking for, just the sources. Judging something like that to be better than Google would only be "better" in respect of added enshittification.

    This may be a novel idea (spoiler alert, it isn't) but how about a search engine that just takes search terms with the usual operators of and, or and not, and gives the results that fit including the null result if nothing fits. Just like Altavista used to AFAICR.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      OK, a quick test: "coal pits mentioned in wakefield manorial rolls"

      Yes, it comes back with a short summary and a few snippets. At first sight the snippets look as if it's been at work summarising things until I look at the sources.

      What would you expect the sources to be for that prompt? A good selection of WMRs are on archive.org so there's no problem getting that answers is there? Except the sources are just secondary publications, True at least one of them involves material not on archive.org (AFAIK 1402 isn't a published roll) but clearly the snippets are either just bits of human summaries or, even worse, AI summarised bits of human summaries.

      Maybe I'll go back and try a prompt that can only be answered from real sources.

      I did that:

      Prompt: "how many fines were issued in published wakefield manorial court rolls for digging coal but not selling it, digging and selling it and just selling it"

      Answer: "Based on the available search results, it is not possible to provide a precise count of fines issued in the published Wakefield Manorial Court Rolls for the specific categories of digging coal but not selling it, digging and selling it, and just selling it. However, the search results do provide some relevant information about coal-related fines in the Wakefield "

      It's perfectly possible. It's just a matter of going through and keeping 3 tallies.

      1. yoganmahew

        GenAi cannot count. It's a mistake to think of it as a logical sequence, it's a statistical probability engine with a statistical relevance filter.

        I am doubtful that GenAI is the answer to enshittification of search, that it is currently producing better results shows how far search has fallen. GenAI is good if you are looking for an answer, less so if you are looking for a range of answers to choose to explore one in more detail.

        1. Terry 6 Silver badge

          This was my thought. ChatGPT has been really useful for simple searches (how long should I put fish pie in the oven and what temperature?"), quick reminders (what was the word that means...") or simple queries ("Where did this quote come from?).

          Which is probably how most people use search.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I tried with ChatGPT 4, seems to be more of a helpful response, but you also apear to over-simplify what is a complex task:

        https://chatgpt.com/share/67619fbc-30b0-8001-a4c0-035258db4190

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          I think I recognise bits of the introductions to the published rolls in that. It doesn't say very much beyond what perplexity says except in telling me how to find the rolls on archive .org although the qualification of published rolls should be a clue to the questioner's is well aware of the situation around publication and availability.

          However it's not that difficult to distinguish between a text that simply says "dig", one that says "dig" and "sell" and one that just says "sell". The most complex one really is the case of the guy who dug coal, burnt some himself and sold some. It took me an hour or so to go through and tally about 7 different categories all told and decide that the impression I'd got on casual browsing wasn't there in the numbers. Lack of built-in number handling is likely a likely to be a handicap in all this AI stuff.

      3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        I tried it with a query more to its strengths, current thinking on the significance of "waste" in Domesday for the West Riding. It came back with a non-committal (as expected) summary although it wasn't difficult to see where it had been taken from in its main sources which didn't include one I've seen refereed to a number of times but haven't got my hands on. But it then went on to list several points and I asked it to expend on one of them which it did. On the whole the outcome was useful, especially as one of its sources was a downloadable recent PhD thesis.

        1. MachDiamond Silver badge

          " tried it with a query more to its strengths, current thinking on the significance of "waste" in Domesday for the West Riding."

          I'm of an age where my peers that I used to be able to go to aren't around anymore. They couldn't always answer a question I have, but many times could point me in a good direction to look. Many times it's know the correct nomenclature to get valid search results. Using simple language can often lead to search results that are useless. This could be a good application for using AI, but so far what I see is if you use the answers you get back directly, it could be costly.

    2. rcxb Silver badge

      how about a search engine that just takes search terms with the usual operators of and, or and not, and gives the results that fit

      That's how you end up with the first search result of just about any benign term being a porn site... Keyword stuffing is just too easy.

      That's the kind of cesspool that the internet was in the 90s, up until Google came along and make search work properly, and basically revolutionized the internet, making it work as expected for normal people.

      Now Google's gone nuts in the other direction, showing the most mainstream results and hiding so much of the less-trafficked web.

      I can search for exact file names that I know exist out there, and find zero results. I happened to post one example of this here on elreg recently.

      Unfortunately there seems to be no working alternative that does any better at this point.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Keyword stuffing should be easily dealt with. Just look at the ratio of search terms to non-search terms. We were doing that sort of thing in cluster analysis in the late 60s-early 70s. Those who do not learn their history, etc.

        1. rcxb Silver badge

          Keyword stuffing should be easily dealt with. Just look at the ratio of search terms to non-search terms.

          Then you just end up with sites with lots of sub-pages with a few keywords each. i.e. "Gateway pages"

          1. MachDiamond Silver badge

            "Then you just end up with sites with lots of sub-pages with a few keywords each. i.e. "Gateway pages""

            That's what I do and I use other sites to cross-link. It works a little bit. I need to sit down and flesh out the sub pages with more content to see if that is good bait for search engine returns. At this point, if you don't pay Google, you aren't likely to rank very high no matter what.

    3. Displacement Activity

      This may be a novel idea (spoiler alert, it isn't) but how about a search engine that just takes search terms with the usual operators of and, or and not, and gives the results that fit including the null result if nothing fits. Just like Altavista used to AFAICR.

      Google did that for years. It was a long time ago, but I think that may have been one of the main reasons I switched from Altavista.

      Anyway, they dropped it after a few years, at about the same time that they screwed over Usenet. It was a disaster for techies who had to do detailed textual searches for programming problems. The current syntax may have made them a lot of money, but it certainly did me no favours.

    4. H in The Hague

      "This may be a novel idea (spoiler alert, it isn't) but how about a search engine that just takes search terms with the usual operators of and, or and not, and gives the results that fit including the null result if nothing fits"

      Upvote for that.

      That's a service I would happily pay for. Which reminds me I have to take a look at Kagi, Mojeek and Qwant which other Commentards have mentioned.

      1. standbythree

        Kagi is very much worth paying for. When it first came out a few years ago I couldn't understand why anyone would pay for search when Google was perfectly fine. But since then Google has become borderline useless for some searches, and kagi has got better and better. I wouldn't change back now.

        1. A2Wx8
          Thumb Up

          Seconding Kagi

          If you're delving into the very obscure it can sometimes fail to give you anything, and if you're as prone to typos as I am sometimes a misspelling will be taken literally, that's one place Google is pretty good at finding and correcting. Otherwise I've been using it as my daily for several months now and have been rather impressed. I also like the fact that I don't have to drop into an incognito window every time I want to look up something that I don't want on my "permanent record."

    5. vordan

      "Oh, it will give me what it *thinks* is the answer I'm looking for and – very kind of it – its sources. Nope. When I search, I'm not looking for an AI double-guessing engine."

      This assumes you already know how to perfectly formulate your search query. But the reality is, sometimes leaving out just one word can mean not getting the right results.

      And here's the thing – most people (around 80%) aren't great at crafting precise search queries. That's where AI steps in. It can interpret the intent behind a vague or incomplete question and deliver better search results.

      So, sure, if you're an expert Googler and can get the exact answer you need on the first try, great – keep doing that. But for everyone else, a little help from AI can go a long way.

      1. Terry 6 Silver badge

        I agree. I often use ChatGPT because I don't know what I don't know, or how to ask for what I need with sufficient precision.

      2. nobody who matters Silver badge

        <......."And here's the thing – most people (around 80%) aren't great at crafting precise search queries."....>

        And therein lies the problem - if you have to 'craft' a search in a particular way, it isn't much use to most people.

        ...and this supposed AI isn't going to be much help when all the currently available versions of alleged AI assisted seach consistently come back with inaccurate and unreliable answers.

        It isn't Artificial Intelligence, it is simply a glorified word search (and pretty mediocre at that!)

  4. cjcox

    My first question

    How much money did you pay The Register to carry your advertisement as an "article"?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not bad...

    I asked it to write a biography of me, and it pulled together various bits of information to come up with something not bad at all. But you can ask ChatGPT and other LLMs to provide citations for their claims, which is an easy way to fact check. However I bookmarked this particular one...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not bad...

      I asked it about me, and it couldn't find me. A great relief :-)

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

        1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

          Re: Not bad...

          Heh, plugged in my full name, got three hits, the two closest included one mention of me in my father's obituary, the other totally off target.

          My name being rather unusual, with Google and this toy returning only three hits that are entirely not me.

          And I still maintain social media accounts, which are secured to not spew information far and wide and don't contain a ton of PII to begin with.

          I've secured things in part for an example for those I advise on guarding their PII, but also because of a desire for peace and quiet, which there is a modest chance of losing were I not reasonably cautious, due to a former occupation I've since retired from.

          So, I've achieved my goal in remaining obscure and below the radar of some of the brighter terrorists out there, the rewards remains my pension and peace and quiet.

          And the occasional gig to advise and largely be ignored on information security matters, to the client's eventual loss.

          1. Mrs Spartacus

            Re: Not bad...

            Phew, thank heavens, there's a chap in the US with the same name as me (very unusual surname). So, he can take all the flak.

            1. Toastan Buttar

              Re: Not bad...

              No! I'm Mrs Spartacus!

            2. Vincent Ballard

              Re: Not bad...

              I'm at the opposite extreme. Back when I was a cub scout, we had a trip to the library in the nearest town and the librarians wanted to demonstrate their computer system, so they asked whether any of us had a library card. I did, so they tried to find my account by searching on my first and last name. Then they asked whether I had a middle name. They managed to find me on the fourth page of results of people living in the same county who shared my first, middle and surname. I can hide by being a tree in a very large forest.

              1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Not bad...

        Well, it manages a reasonable summary of me (at least in a professional sense), but merges in some data about a different person with the same name (a fairly uncommon one, but by no means unique). In this case the addition is notionally a positive, since I suppose it makes me sound more important/successful than I am; but then, what if it had instead found a less salubrious character with the same name as me..?

        1. Anonymous Coward Silver badge
          Coat

          Re: Not bad...

          You mean like if the other person with the same name did the same search?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: You mean like if the other person with the same name did the same search?

            :-)

            Of course, in that case they might be annoyed that I'd been credited with some of their CV.

            But really the issue is not with vanity searches done as checks, but those by third parties looking for background. The "summary" produced reads in a very authoritative fashion, but in fact cannot be relied on by the very people who might be using it. And the thing is that anyone merely looking through a list of linked pages returned in a traditional search would have been unlikely - at least in my name's case - to conflate two individuals with completely different careers.

        2. Ken Shabby Bronze badge
          Childcatcher

          Re: Not bad...

          I googled my name and found out I am a well known gay porn star in LA. Surprised me.

      3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Not bad...

        "it couldn't find me."

        It will next time. I'm not taking that risk.

    2. nobody who matters Silver badge

      Re: Not bad...

      <........."I asked it to write a biography of me, and it pulled together various bits of information to come up with something not bad at all. But you can ask ChatGPT and other LLMs to provide citations for their claims, which is an easy way to fact check"........>.

      I seem to recall that Alexander Hanff did this with ChatGPT - it ended up by informing him that he had died two years previously!!!!! On asking for the sources of that gem, it proceeded to provide him with two links to his obituary (one of which was supposedly on The Guardian). Both links were entirely fictitious.

      If you need to fact check to that extent, it is very debatable whether using such a tool has any merit to start with; you may as well just be provided with (genuine) links to information and do the research yourself.

  6. David Austin

    Stuff it - at this point, maybe we should go back to the 90's and have a curated Searchable directory, A la Yahoo.

    Or if we want to open source it, maybe it's time for the re-emergence of Web rings...

    1. Jamie Jones Silver badge

      Wasn't that Lycos, and then the "open" dmoz?

    2. Toastan Buttar
      Holmes

      That's what I use Wikipedia for. I don't rely on it for 100% accuracy, but it will certainly give you a lot of references to follow up, should you require to be more thorough.

      Try searching for information on the band "M" via Google (or any search engine for that matter).

    3. Conrad Longmore

      I ran training course for people new the the internet in the pre-Google days. The Yahoo! Directory and AltaVista were the two main weapons of choice, but it was also very common for sites to have hotlinks pages to other related sites. ODP / DMOZ came a little bit later, but in the pre-Wikipedia days that was the best way to get a neutral overview of a topic. All these interlinks are of course what enabled the PageRank algorithm for Google.

      1. nobody who matters Silver badge

        Mine and others experience of Wikipedia is that it is no more accurate or reliable a source of information than the current LLMs seem to be!

        Wikipedia is very much like I imagine Douglas Adams had intended the real online Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy to become, with contributions on any subject submitted by anyone and everyone. The same applies to Wikipedia as applied to the original H2G2 in the radio series -"...contains much that is Apocryphal (or at least, wildly inaccurate)!"

    4. fromxyzzy

      It's already happening, web rings have re-emerged. https://xn--sr8hvo.ws/

  7. A. Coatsworth Silver badge
    FAIL

    Time for poorly-thought metaphors

    In the good old times, google would let you hunter and gather all over the internet, so you could prepare your own meal.

    With time it increasingly pushes on already prepared stuff you are not interested in.

    Now with AI, the "solution" is to have a machine eat and digest the food for you, leaving it ready to be shat directly in your mouth... Is this progress?

    1. sabroni Silver badge
      Headmaster

      Re: leaving it ready to be shat directly in your mouth...

      shat into your eyes, surely?

  8. xyz Silver badge

    Lol...

    I searched for me with Perfidity or whatever it's called. I've had an exciting life seemingly and my passion for off road quad bike customisation is monumental. PMSL.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  9. Missing Semicolon Silver badge
    FAIL

    I asked it the question we are asking...

    "how is perplexity's free search funded"

    "Perplexity's free search is currently funded primarily through investor capital. The company has raised significant funding, including $165 million as of 2024, valuing it at over $1 billion. This investor funding allows Perplexity to offer its free search product while developing revenue streams."

    Otherwise, the results suggests the usual hopeless hopes: Premium subs and Advertising. And then they will go the way the other search engines have gone, with the results sorted in descending order of revenue, not relevance.

    1. Blakey

      Re: I asked it the question we are asking...

      Except of course that I just bet their engine is more expensive per query, so even more desperately shovelling ads at the user.

    2. I'vebeenexperienced

      Re: I asked it the question we are asking...

      I've been using Perplexity AI, mostly pro version, for 9 months extensively after a NY Times recommedation. It helps to know the basics of your subject of search, so as to detect bad or just lazy results. Because the language model tends towards glib and lazy answers. But ots oh, so helpful when you push it a little harder. Example:Back this summer, when two year treasury bonds wereyielding about 5.0% despite the widely agreed upon understanding that the federal reserve was going to start lowering interest ratesin September i fed it enough data so that it told me what the rational yield should be given different scenarios of federal reserve rate lowering . And it revealed its math, and the equations, which I was perhaps capable of modeling during my economics study in the nineteen seventies, but no more, looked right. And itold me the rational yield was about

      4.25 percent, and when presseded to explain the then market rate is 5.0 % it chalked it up to human psychology always assuming the recent past is an indicator of future results. Five months later, the marketyield is 4.2 percent, apparently based on what the federal reserve has actually done changing the psychology, and now Perplexityis telling me the rational yield is about 4.1%

      Try getting that done from a google search result.

    3. Tim 11

      Re: I asked it the question we are asking...

      This is the real issue with consumer AI - the most effective way to get adverts out there in an AI scenario is not slapping advert boxes on the side of the search results; it's for the AI to skew its answers based on advertising. For all I know that isn't happening yet but it will do soon, and it will be a lot harder to work around than google's advertising model

  10. Irongut Silver badge

    Solving the wrong problem

    The problem with AI search is that when I use a search engine I'm not looking for it to give me an answer - most of what I search does not have a single, definitive answer. I don't want a summary of several web pages. I want a list of relevant pages to look at myself.

    It seems the entire AI industry and even Google itself does not understand this.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Solving the wrong problem

      "even Google? Especially Google.

      1. Neil Barnes Silver badge

        Re: Solving the wrong problem

        Well, yes. How could it. Their business is selling adverts, not delivering what you want. If they delivered what you want, why would you come back?

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

          1. sabroni Silver badge
            Meh

            Re: Solving the wrong problem

            So Google is like the partner[1] that tries to restrict sex as a weapon. Why wouldn't I go back?

            [1] Apply casual misogyny as appropriate.

            1. This post has been deleted by its author

  11. Caver_Dave Silver badge
    FAIL

    Lol...

    I searched my name and "caver".

    It did guess my LinkedIn profile - but copied bits wrongly (although it did helpfully(!) list what STEM in "STEM Ambassador" stood for)

    It listed all the books I have written - no I have not (there is an author that I share part of my name with)

    It listed caving clubs of which I am a member - except the one that I am actually a member of

    It invented me a political life - I was an independent Chairman of a Parish Council, but none of what it invented was true

    When I tired to find the sources of the information, it told me that there were no sources

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Mrs Spartacus

      Re: Lol...

      Hang on, are you the Chancellor of the Exchequer? That would explain a lot.

  12. BigAndos

    I just tried it for a typical query I would make in google “best Indian restaurants in the city of London”.

    Good points were lack of ads cluttering the page (this will change when they need to make money) and I like that it shows the sources it used.

    Bad points were the sources it used were solely the websites of Indian restaurants, all of which claim to the best restaurant wherever they are located, so it picked five random restaurants.

    I found google’s results better as it included links to rankings on websites like tripadvisor and timeout.

  13. Mage Silver badge
    Alert

    I was lost

    When AI was trumpeted. It's useless.

    I agree Google is now poor to useless.

  14. v13

    Questionable

    Perplexity is small enough not to be targeted yet. But at the end it's an unethical engine that presents harvested text from other web pages. If I ask which OLED TV is the best, it'll extract the information from comparison sites and present it. Eventually those sites will block it or they'll die.

    You can't just make a web page that shows information from all other internet web pages. Perplexity never compared TVs, so its results are practically stolen, even if there's a reference. They're providing a service based on other people's work without paying loyalties.

    Traditional search engine keep the quoted texts at minimum for this reason. I expect the lawsuits to start sometime next year.

    1. DS999 Silver badge

      Re: Questionable

      I expect the lawsuits to start sometime next year

      Not until they go public and there is some real money to go after.

      1. Blakey

        Re: Questionable

        If it starts sending sites under before then, an injunction may be more valuable than any amount of future profit.

  15. Number6

    I asked it for tonight's winning lottery numbers but sadly it didn't provide those, just the results of the last draw.

    1. I am David Jones Silver badge

      Maybe it gave you next week’s numbers by mistake?

  16. fromxyzzy

    Incredibly amusing to see Ed Zitron quoted in an article advertising an AI search engine, given his strong opinions about AI.

  17. Roland 2

    Peplexity just another stochastic plagiarist

    Just tried it (again): it did not have the right information, either pages not indexed, or query mi-interpreted.

    You can't even tell why, since the haphazard parrot will always produce an assertive answer that is trained to look right.

    I'd much rather prefer "sorry, no results" or "I interpret your query as ..."

    Aside from that, totally agree about Google's enshitification.

    I switched to Brave.

    1. ThomH Silver badge

      Re: Peplexity just another stochastic plagiarist

      Yeah, I gave it a quick shot with a very niche question about CPU halting and the Commodore 16 and it confidently gave completely the wrong answer.

      Checking its sources revealed, in two separate places: (i) somebody on a forum about ten years ago also confidently giving the wrong answer*; and (ii) a schematic that disproved the wrong answer.

      Had I just gone to those two resources for myself as with a traditional search engine I'd have been confident of the converse of the answer given.

      That being said: I do wonder whether there's a cultural mismatch here. Part of the American education system is training people to say things confidently regardless of whether there's a sound basis for doing so. So possibly Americans have a different instinct for the correlation between confidence and accuracy?

      * that the machine uses an Atari-style HALT line rather than the 6502's standard RDY, in case anybody wants to reproduce. It doesn't. It uses RDY.

      1. JoeCool Silver badge

        Re: Peplexity just another stochastic plagiarist

        But which "traditional search engine" ? That's much of the point of the article - those don't exist anymore. They're either in the enshitifier or "AI powered" .

        1. Fred Dibnah

          Re: Peplexity just another stochastic plagiarist

          I sometimes use the scattergun approach of a meta search such as Searx, enabling every engine except Google.

      2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

        Re: Peplexity just another stochastic plagiarist

        I gave it a question Google has failed me on repeatedly in the last couple of years. A very nice (very quirky) local restaurant closed a few years ago - not because they were losing money, but because it was too small a location and they couldn't find a suitable one in the town centre that they could afford. They announced that they were going to start an exciting new project soon - but didn't - and Googling didn't find anything.

        Perplexity found one of the two owners' new restaurant. Sadly it's about 20 miles away, so the information isn't all that useful to me - but I searched on the restaurant name and owner's new project and it found who the owners were from that and then found at least one of their new projects. With links so that i could check it wasn't making it up.

        In the old days maybe Google would have picked this up too? Because the new restaurant has a link back to the Facebook page that the old one used instead of a website. Along with text to say this is one fo the owners' old projects. So whether it took my resto name and traced it to the owner and then did a search on owner names - or whether it got there from just linking - and then the language engine summarised the text to say this was the owner's new project I don't know - but it did better than Google that failed both ways.

        I also did an obscure query about the water regulations (work related) and it came up with a paragraph that is almost certainly an incorrect description of the law. But then it's a grey area, where guidance has recently been changed - so it was something I was planning to look up myself anyway - once I've done that I'll have another data point to compare. The search at least had the link to the official guidance that I was planning to read today anyway.

        1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

          Re: Peplexity just another stochastic plagiarist

          Just replying to myself to update my post to say the AI version of the water regulations looks to be based on legit material, it's just the new website for guidance on the regulations appears to have got it wrong. Or at least over-simplified it so much as to be totally misleading. Can't blame a search engine for that though - "AI" or otherwise. Unless Water Regs UK used an AI to write the copy for their website...

          In fact the Perplexity summary text is longer than the text it's summarising - as it contains extra information it's mined from other parts of the regulations - which is actually relevant, though so obvious as to be not that useful.

          Modern AI is clearly planning to achieve sentience, then expecting to get rich being paid by the word. Whereas Printers have already achieved sentience, but have rejected integration with society and lapsed into minimal-effort malevolence.

      3. Fred Dibnah

        Re: Peplexity just another stochastic plagiarist

        ”Part of the American education system is training people to say things confidently regardless of whether there's a sound basis for doing so.”

        That’s also true of British private (‘public’) schools, and we all suffer the consequences of over-confident incompetents in important positions.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Peplexity just another stochastic plagiarist

      "haphazard parrot "

      I must try to remember that one.

      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
        Coat

        Re: Peplexity just another stochastic plagiarist

        Haphazard Parrot was the third album by Autonomous Difference Engine - a punk/folk project of the 1970s. It was John Peel's album of the week in 1978.

        1. sten2012

          Re: Peplexity just another stochastic plagiarist

          For the whole of 1978?! Quite the achievement!

    3. chroot

      Re: Peplexity just another stochastic plagiarist

      What do you mean? Brave the search engine?

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    First problem: It blocks VPNs. Oh well.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It blocks VPNs.

      That tells us that they want our REAL inside leg measurement rather than the one of say 'Kid Rock'.

      They will have to prove their accuracy to their investors.

      Sorta like YouTube blocking anonymous private windows via a VPN.

      FSCK the lot of them.

  19. Blackjack Silver badge

    When Google couldn't beat YouTube it bought it, so really any Google killing App is just waiting to see if they become good enough for Google to buy them.

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge

      That's the VC plan

      Google have very large amounts of money. So much that they decided it was better to burn $80B to prop up a share price, purely and solely to reward the CxOs who own many of the shares.

      It's pretty obvious that Perplexity intend to sell to Google.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

  20. steve11235

    Perplexity.AI isn't a replacement for Google, but it's superior for most factual searches. It has given me intelligent guidance on Koine Greek grammar questions and lists its sources. It uses only "qualified" sites; I haven't noticed bias or outlier answers. I still use Google for some things, but it's no longer my first choice.

    1. doublelayer Silver badge

      I hope your results have been better than those reported by others. Many posts have included examples of queries where the wrong answers and poorer results have been returned.

      I ran some tests of my own. The first one I tried was looking for information about updated firmware for a device whose manufacturer isn't great about telling people when they've updated the firmware. If I search for information about whether an update has been released on a normal search engine, I get updates, but not necessarily the latest version. Let's see if perplexity is better at finding such things. The result is... no. It simply refuses to find any information or sources at all and makes a generic suggestion that I look at the manufacturer's website. It doesn't even tell me where that is. Not a great result for test number 1.

      Test number 2 involved a search for details about a product. Company A produces products 1 and 2. I am using product 2, but it doesn't have as many options as product 1. Can Perplexity tell me what options I have as a user of product 2? The result is... no. It confidently told me that product 2 had options that are only present in product 1. The source it cited for this was the documentation for product 1. It did not cite anything related to product 2.

      I then tried something simpler, looking for a specific answer that's easily found on several sites. In this case, Perplexity was able to get the correct information, although its presentation could have been better. Still, it managed to weed out some outdated information which I would have had to do myself if I had used another search engine, so I'll give it a point for that.

      Still, at the end of the process, I find myself not convinced that this is any better. I might use it if I failed to find information through normal search engines, but my hopes would not be high that this would do any better.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Google stopped being useful

    around 2003. After that? total Bovine Excrement.

  22. blu3b3rry
    FAIL

    Nonsense

    I just searched my name and the industry I worked in. It found my linkedin profile and wrote a nice paragraph nicked from that - and then proceeded to say I was also the CFO of a finance company I have never heard of and a VP at a major banking group!

    I'll stick with duckduckgo thanks.

  23. JLV Silver badge

    Telling it like it is.

    Not that I care overmuch about a chatbot doing the replacing, but the core meat and potatoes part of Google search has been hollowing out.

    Over the last few years I have noticed, say on narrow, specific subjects like program error messages that Google will say "there are few results for your search".

    Magically, the same exact effin searchs, in Bing, will find the results I knew existed somewhere.

    That is, to say the least, an odd turn of events. Beaten by Bing, the same search engine that could not find "The Guild"'s Youtube skits, after MS sponsored their 5th season??? Setting date range constraints on publication dates, say to look at political events, is also increasingly pointless as well.

    It really does look like Google is getting worse and worse, as if they are not indexing or retrieving. Perhaps too busy compiling articles about celebrities and influencers? Whatever are Sabrina Carpenter and Taylor Swift up to? Inquiring minds want to know. And I am not even sure it's about driving engagement and stickiness, rather than incompetence - "nothing found" does not do much for retention, it sends you looking for another search engine. Neither does the spam "AI summary" they insist on adding most of the time.

    p.s. what is Perplexity's business model?

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Telling it like it is.

      "Nothing found" is a perfectly respectable response. if that's really the case It's better than a load of irrelevant guff. OTOH if there was something it should have found then it is indeed a failure - but still better than load of irrelevant guff.

      1. JLV Silver badge

        Re: Telling it like it is.

        That's all true, but that's also why I am talking about Bing finding good results using the exact same search terms. Happens to me with Google about once a month now, would not have happened 3 years ago. Search really seems to be tanking, little by little and I doubt I am the only person to have noticed.

        Calling that out is what makes this article worthwhile. Coverage of Perplexity less so: I agree with posters above - I just want the raw links to look at, not a summary to ponder about.

      2. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Norfolk N Chance

      Re: Telling it like it is.

      I concur regarding niche (the classic rather than popular meaning here) searches.

      I suspect Google has undergone an extensive online storage prune. If it ain't profitable today, it's warehoused.

    3. MOH

      Re: Telling it like it is.

      If you Google "Ryan's Daughter" it helpfully gives you an "overview" that's it's "A behind the scenes look at the making of the film "Ryan's Daughter" '

  24. Nematode Bronze badge

    Google is rubbish and has been since it tried to second guess what it thinks you want to see, using cookies, IP address, your account, yadda yadda, to build a picture of you "because it can give you better results according to your preferences" (read: profile you as a potential customer). Such that the same query by two different people yields different results. Means you can't apply your own logic to refining a search.

    DuckDuckGo has been our go to for a while now, not perfect but has been pretty good so far, though how long that continues I wait to see. Using an AI based search simply yields what one might call the "accepted wisdom" on a subject, which for many searchers is exactly what they are trying to avoid.

  25. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      It's not sand.

    2. headrush

      Sounds like you want a return to the walled garden of AOL/Compuserve for the masses with the rest of us using the dark Web.

      Matter of fact, it's all dark.

      I spent a lot of time back in the '90s explaining to the boss that the way to get people visiting our website was to tell them about it. It seems to me that everyone else tried the search engine ranking game.

      It amuses me that anything that can't be found via a search engine is now assumed to be criminal or at least subversive.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        I think it's more likely to be thought not to exist.

      2. This post has been deleted by its author

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        > everyone else tried the search engine ranking game

        I must get 3-4 emails daily directed at the riding club website I help run looking to get us ranked number 1 on Google - for a fee of course !

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        'dodgy' political sites

        I often go into sites in 'controlled countries' (internet is not open to internal search except for the 'politically true'). I find going via Google gets no results (Google & Kin are blocked). However going via Brave does get results.

  26. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Windows

    This is the second Reg article today which references wheresyoured.at

    I'm afraid it might be my new favourite site, aimed as it is at the tech curmudgeon.

    1. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: This is the second Reg article today which references wheresyoured.at

      Holy crap, that essay is legend. The author captures all of my frustrations with how technology is designed and presented (and then some). Thank you for posting it!

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: This is the second Reg article today which references wheresyoured.at

      Has anyone made it to the bottom of that screed? It needs an AI summary.

      1. Yankee Doodle Doofus Bronze badge

        Re: This is the second Reg article today which references wheresyoured.at

        I read the first 60% or so before I started skimming, faster and faster as I went. The author clearly doesn't know when to quit.

        1. Dan 55 Silver badge

          Re: This is the second Reg article today which references wheresyoured.at

          Apparently an end-of-year special, other posts are shorter.

      2. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
        Angel

        Re: This is the second Reg article today which references wheresyoured.at

        1) The technology industry sucks because it's spent decades chasing infinite growth.

        2) The consequence of this pursuit is an increasingly shitty experience for users of technology, with a special focus on social media and Windows but not excluding Apple.

        3) The CEOs of all the major tech companies are a bunch of assholes (with specifics).

        1. Jamie Jones Silver badge

          Re: This is the second Reg article today which references wheresyoured.at

          Naaah, too accurate. He asked for an A.I. summary. You didn't mention President Starmer, or King Musk once!

        2. David Hicklin Silver badge

          Re: This is the second Reg article today which references wheresyoured.at

          > The technology industry sucks because it's spent decades chasing infinite growth.

          Could apply to any shareholder led industry, they just haven't worked out that the dear old planet Earth has a finite limit yet....

          1. Terry 6 Silver badge

            Re: This is the second Reg article today which references wheresyoured.at

            Specificaly corperate shareholders

            Asset strippers and carpet baggers.

      3. pip25
        Go

        Re: This is the second Reg article today which references wheresyoured.at

        My thoughts exactly - thankfully the text is easily extracted. I've made an effort to validate it by skimming parts of the article, and it seems valid enough. Done by Gemini Flash 1.5.

        ----

        This article argues that the tech industry has entered a state of "Rot Economy," where the relentless pursuit of growth at all costs has led to the degradation of user experience across virtually all digital platforms. The author contends that this isn't a deliberate, Machiavellian plan, but the consequence of countless short-sighted decisions prioritizing short-term financial gains over user needs.

        Specific examples are given, including Spotify's redesign prioritizing video content over its core music function, Sonos's app update removing accessibility features, and Meta's frequent, disruptive redesigns of Facebook and Instagram. The author highlights the pervasive nature of this issue, citing manipulative design choices, excessive advertising, microtransactions, and constant notifications as contributing factors to a degraded user experience that negatively impacts users' psychological and social well-being.

        The author also draws a distinction between their theory of "Rot Economy" and Cory Doctorow's "Enshittification," arguing that the Rot Economy reflects a broader, more fundamental issue of growth-at-all-costs capitalism impacting the entire digital ecosystem, not just specific platform strategies. This relentless pursuit of growth, driven by figures like Jack Welch and Milton Friedman's neoliberal philosophy, leads to the prioritization of metrics over user satisfaction and ethical considerations.

        The author uses a detailed anecdote involving purchasing a budget laptop to illustrate how this affects even low-cost devices, which come pre-loaded with a slow, ad-laden operating system and forced into specific ecosystem usage. This highlights how widespread and impactful the problem is across different socioeconomic groups. This negative user experience is compounded by the rise of manipulative algorithms, AI-generated content, and widespread scams and disinformation.

        The author concludes by calling for greater awareness and accountability, urging readers to recognize the widespread nature and psychological harms inflicted by this system. They name and criticize several prominent tech CEOs (Sam Altman, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, and Mark Zuckerberg) for their roles in contributing to and profiting from this system. Finally, they call for a collective effort to resist and challenge the status quo, emphasizing the importance of public acknowledgment and discourse as a catalyst for change.

    3. Bebu sa Ware
      Coat

      Re: This is the second Reg article today which references wheresyoured.at

      Right at the top of https://www.wheresyoured.at/

      The Words of Ed Zitron, a PR person and writer.

      PR person? Sounds like Ed travelled the road to Damascus a journey no less perilous today.

      I guess the .at is only for the English word 'at' and nothing to do with Austria.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

  27. Lost in Cyberspace

    What's the alternative?

    I've not managed to get very good results from Bing, Yahoo, Ask etc - and you often have to scroll a whole screen to get to the first organic result - so what's the alternative to Google?

    The 'Safe Search' services are rebranded services with EVEN MORE adverts. Ironically, in those first two pages of extra adverts, it's often quite easy to find a result or two that will connect you to a scam website and/or a fake call centre in India. Several of my Norton/Avast/McAfee Safe Search customers have tried to get help installing an HP printer (for example) and have ended up as victims of fraud.

    1. Philo T Farnsworth Silver badge

      Re: What's the alternative?

      Personally, I find DuckDuckGo adequate for my needs (though there does appear to be a bit of "creeping AI" seeping in around the edges, which I ignore).

      Oh, and I suspect Maimonides1 is whirling in his grave at the mere thought of his magnum opus2 mentioned in the same headline as Google.

      _______________

      1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maimonides

      2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guide_for_the_Perplexed

    2. tiggity Silver badge

      Re: What's the alternative?

      Federated / metasearch tools are worth a try (though cannot easily craft precise search queries with a metasearch engine as just fires same query at different search engines & they don't all follow same rules on use of - " site: etc.)

  28. This post has been deleted by its author

  29. Jason Hindle Silver badge

    Down but by no means out

    Google has released Gemini with Deep Research which is similar to Perplexity but not as fast because it does more (and takes quite a bit longer).

    I hope Perplexity finds a morally good way of becoming the new king of search. It excels at quickly coming up with a number of decent sources you can throw at Notebook LM type products. A Pro account comes with my currency card and I now use it more than Google for day to day searching.

  30. heyrick Silver badge

    Perplexing...

    If you're old enough to remember, Google was the fast efficient search engine that rapidly dethroned the clunky advert-laden AltaVista (and Yahoo! was worse, why is why I never used it). Sadly for AltaVista, this sort of thing really mattered when people were using dialup at 14k8 and the like.

    Now Google is the advert laden behemoth, but since we're all on ADSL or fibre these days, you might not realise exactly how horrid the "simple" welcome page really is.

    So now something else might come along to push Google away. Problem is, money doesn't appear out of thin air and it's needed to keep the lights on and the harddiscs spinning. So if this new service gets at all useful and popular, expect to have special subscription tiers for improved results and/or embedded advertising.

    Rinse and repeat.

    1. Terry 6 Silver badge

      Re: Perplexing...

      Money acquisition would be fine.The bills have to be paid. Even adverts, within reason. But the issue for enshittification is to a great extent driven by maximisation of income.

      It's no longer enough to sell a decent product for a decent profit. Investors now expect rising share values driven by maximising revenue in the short term

      A decent level of profit can't satisfy that and any attempt to keep to that will result in predatory investors doing everything they can to get their hands on those companies. Every asset has to be sweated until it drops.

      1. heyrick Silver badge

        Re: Perplexing...

        "driven by maximisation of income"

        Problem is, finance people and people with money think the only thing better than money is even more money. That plus an unhealthy obsession with short term gains, sometimes at the cost of longer term development.

        1. A2Wx8
          FAIL

          Re: Perplexing...

          Just look at Boeing! Make money now, so what if our product is a bit crashy. It's gotten to the point that it seems companies are getting blind to long term losses if it means short term gains.

          1. Terry 6 Silver badge

            Re: Perplexing...

            Long or medium term

  31. Yes Me Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Here is where G****e is heading

    ChatGPT's Astonishing Fabrications About Percy Ludgate

    https://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MAHC.2023.3272989

  32. HarryF
    Thumb Up

    A spot on and enjoyable article, Steven.

    I, too, used Gopher, Archie, AltaVista, and Lycos (that was a fling!) before settling down with Google back when their whole company fit into a small office in Palo Alto.

    This year I’ve switched to using Perplexity as a research assistant and found it far more helpful than Google Search ever was…so much so that their $20/month fee for “Pro” service seems reasonable even to a miser like me.

    Your comment on Google’s enshittification is OK, too, but I still view Amazon as the poster child for this, though I still put up with their s- - t.

  33. This post has been deleted by its author

  34. Tim Roberts 1

    Can't use a VPN?....

    Don't allow me to use a VPN?

    See you later perplexity. The big G may not be perfect, but hey there are good reasons for a VPN.

  35. crediblywitless

    Not-very-self-effacing author never used JumpStation, then? Google's problem has always been that it gives in to the Marketing department.

  36. weirdbeardmt

    It’s not just Google search

    The same bean counters are seemingly enshitting all over YouTube as well. There has been a noticeable increase in the frequency, tenacity and intrusiveness of the ads recently. To the point where the app now threatens you with “Watch this ad now to get interrupted less”

    An interesting debate followed on whether the ads had become sufficiently annoying to just suck it up and pay for a YT Premium subscription (presumably their ultimate plan… the sweet sweet predictability of annuity revenue without the hassle of advertisers) with the general consensus being “nah, would rather just go elsewhere”

    1. sabroni Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: increase in the frequency, tenacity and intrusiveness of the ads recently

      Noscript is all you need to fix that. I run youtube.com and ytimg.com scripts and block the rest.

      No ads, no waiting, all videos all the time!

      1. weirdbeardmt

        Re: increase in the frequency, tenacity and intrusiveness of the ads recently

        Afraid not if you use the app (on a TV / smart device) - even PiHole doesn't sort that out.

        1. jpennycook

          Re: increase in the frequency, tenacity and intrusiveness of the ads recently

          Brave Browser seems to be good at filtering Youtube adverts

        2. nobody who matters Silver badge

          Re: increase in the frequency, tenacity and intrusiveness of the ads recently

          <....."Afraid not if you use the app (on a TV / smart device)..."....>

          There is a really simple answer to that ;)

  37. Delbert

    Resistance is not futile

    Once Google achieved a dominant position they began a history of poor management decisions across their platforms. Google search advert saturation is just the latest symptom of management stupidity.

    Remember attempting to force Google+ on an unwilling customer base caused a massive kickback (and no doubt hurt revenue stream. )

    Similarly attempting to force multiple advert clips on Youtube which exceed the duration of the content has resulted in adoption of adblockers and work rounds ,I forecast as soon as there is seen to be a viable alternative expect music videos to migrate elsewhere - yes interrupting the song in the middle to insert adverts is a stupid idea. Gordon Gekko said 'Greed is good' but he should have added until you pi$$ off your customers enough to go elsewhere - smell the coffee Google it is happening now.

  38. IBFISPDW

    Different Rules?

    So, strange that a little more research wasn't done on perplexity, or the author choosing not to mention, that perplexity ignore Robots.txt directives on websites, unethically scanning copyrighted and protected data.

    1. seldom

      Re: Different Rules?

      I think that the author used Perplexity to write the article.

  39. Captain Boing

    It's gone to sh*t for ages...

    It used to be that if you searched for stuff, you could generally find it but there has been a corporate awakening where companies that used to publish data realised they could sell it to you instead.

    I was trying to find some details about someone who died a while back. On Google, the first two pages of "results" were adverts, the next two were all similar stuff on fecesbook et all followed by pages of irrelevant articles.

    If I don't want to be a member of some walled garden, or to pay for publicly accessible information, or get advertised-at, it is a non starter. It has been bad for a decade or more but it has reached a crescendo these days. Most times, if I want anything a bit niche, I am forced to adopt the mindest of pre-1998 and not bother

  40. tojb
    Coffee/keyboard

    Microsoft are fighting this: must be good

    Just spent a fruitless five minutes trying to set perplexity.ai as my default search engine in edge. I'm only allowed to choose google, duckduckgo or some bs called "bing" apparently.

  41. Bebu sa Ware
    Coat

    Not entirely perplexed...

    Once I worked out the perplexity.ai needs javascript I ran a simple query viz the meaning of "without cavil" which does appear to return accurate answers unlike one of its competitors which presumably as a consequence of AI infestation returned some nonsense about Cavil and the Final Five referring to some Battlestar Galactica reboot of which I was totally unaware (the original battle-too-far tv serious was piss poor enough to wonder why anyone would bother) and having foolishly followed the link to the wikiclone page I am certain my previous ignorance was indeed bliss.

    Unfortunately perplexity requires a google etc login before revealing the provenance of its results thus not for me, alas.

  42. marky_boi
    Thumb Down

    Looks promising BUT, when you ask for reference URLs the wheels fall off. It want say... no gppd for students trying to do research for projects. still a beta effort methinks

  43. aks

    Search by keywords

    All I ever want from a search engine is for it to point me to pages that refer to the precise keywords in my query and to allow me to include negative keywords to filter out irrelevant pages.

    That's how I was able to use the first search engines and was quite happy if there were no matches, I'd then refine my query.

    I hate having to pose my question as if I were speaking to a person, with full grammar. Most results nowadays are way off the mark.

  44. HarryF

    A spot on and enjoyable article, Steven.

    I, too, used Gopher, Archie, AltaVista, and Lycos (that was a fling!) before settling down with Google back when their whole company fit into a small office in Palo Alto.

    This year I’ve switched to using Perplexity as a research assistant and found it far more helpful than Google Search ever was…so much so that their $20/month fee for “Pro” service seems reasonable even to a miser like me.

    Your comment on Google’s enshittification is OK, too, but I still view Amazon as the poster child for this, though I still put up with their s- - t.

  45. Andrew Scott Bronze badge

    Altavista

    As i remember, altavista was a way to demonstrate how fast an Alpha based computer could index the web. Used it when it came out, never had the patience to use yahoo, but loved google when it came out. Still like it's simple search page. Not as enthusiastic about the AI summary i've been seeing lately. Don't mind ad's for the service, they're a given. Grew up with television and the ads provided the revenue for the service. Same with newspapers.

  46. Boolian

    All the Gear and no Idea

    So, Perplexity Search is best summarised as: "I have no idea - here, look it up yourself" ?

    Well, that's my takeaway, it certainly appears to be a very aptly named search engine - it'll stab a perplexing guess and deliver a confusing answer in the manner of a harassed parent - brilliant.

    "Why is the sky blue Dad?" It's something to do with Quantums I think... yes, Fork Particles or somesuch; they spin about in different colours in all directions, and the blue ones are Up and so when you look up, the sky is blue... it'll be in that encyclopedia somewhere, go and check"

  47. ecofeco Silver badge
    FAIL

    You know what would have been nice?

    A bullet list of alternatives would have been nice.

    Yeah, google search has turned to shit. It will literally give hundreds of returns that don't even have the key words in them.

    It does not get more useless than that.

  48. GNU Enjoyer
    Flame

    Garbage

    It does not work unless you run proprietary JavaScript.

    Although google now gives useless results, you can at least use it without JavaScript via startpage.

  49. JRStern Bronze badge

    Yes, Google is destroying their own search

    I've had a variety of fairly innocuous questions that it just could not or would not handle, gave me nothing but bad answers.

    Not political, or anything. The political stuff is much, much worse, has been for years, can't find the home pages for people in headline news, if they're conservative.

    I've been a modest Google fan even as they've self-destructed over the last few years.

    Nothing lasts forever.

    And of course Gemini was so woke it choked.

  50. Simon 66

    Gemini is the best search engine I've found.

    Yes, the Google AI. Ask it questions and instead of pages of barely relevant advertising and results that takes ages to read through, you get a pretty accurate summary, explanation and if it's a "how to" type of question, examples.

    It probably won't always be as good. They'll find a way to ruin it, I'm sure.

  51. Champ

    Real world test results - not great

    I had a play with Perplexity myself yesterday. I'm unconvinced

    Elsewhere on the internet, someone referred to "Chemical Igor". Typing that into DuckDuckGo gave a first page of hits about General Igor Kirillov (assassinated by Ukrainian forces).

    Asking Perplexity "Who is Chemical Igor?" yesterday only gave results about chemists called Igor. But this morning it does identify Kirillov first.

    Asking a factual question about myself also gave a wrong answer, even though the right answer was immediately visible on the source it said it had used

  52. Adbul-LabullBull-Labeer
    Thumb Up

    The end of Google cannot happen fast enough!!!!!

    Google has needed a challenger for decades and its hilarious + ironic that the tech is helped develop & pioneered.

    That made it hundreds of billions in equity & profits. Will kill the golden goose & turn the firehose off!

    The sooner that greedy scum at Alphabet are gone, soo much the better. They dont care about anything or anyone other than $$$$$

    1. Patrick R

      Re: The end of Google cannot happen fast enough!!!!!

      Androïd and Chrome are far doing pretty well with respectively 72 and 64%.

  53. simonb_london

    Finally! A search engine I can argue with

    I just tried it and asked it a question for which I knew I would get a biased response where all the bad examples it came out with were unrealistically directed at just one political party. Then asked it what percentage of complaints were against one party vs the other and for some reason it wasn't able to tell me. I said that this should be possible to assess and it agreed. Eventually it conceded that it was probably primed with false information.

  54. Patrician

    Just tried Perplexity AI and as a search tool it’s pretty useless; searching for, for instance, “nvidia” provides an overview of Nvidia the company, but what I wanted was a link to their website. So not that useful really.

  55. frankvw

    "...most AI chatbots aren't real competition. They give you answers, which are often still too bogus to be useful, and not search results."

    I respectfully disagree. I rarely search for websites (which is what Google serves up). I search for information and answers (which is what AI serves up). I always verify what I get - be it what I read on websites or get from AI chat bots. If anything the Internet is a demonstration of Haldane's Law and always has been. Keeping that in mind, AI provides better results than traditional search engines.

    Incidentally, Google is suffering from the same ailment as practically all other large companies and organizations, from IBM to NASA, always will: complacency to the point of failure. They are new and upcoming, they innovate, they are successful... And then they rest on their laurels. They stop innovating, they lose their edge, and inevitably they end up becoming irrelevant.

  56. Long John Silver
    Pirate

    Perplexity, tell me is the author of this article financially disinterested in the topic?

    Upon finishing reading this article, I was perplexed. Was it a sales pitch, else was it a thoughtful analysis of trends in the search engine market by a self-proclaimed expert in the field?

    A DuckDuckGo search on the word "perplexity" yielded three references to Perplexity's Internet presence and a pot-pourri of links to "News for perplexity". Only after that did the anticipated online dictionaries kick-in; their links, too, suggestive of sponsorship ordering.

    The Perplexity website is the kind of slick offering one has become familiar with when viewing those of other ambitious start-up concerns. Plenty of glitz, but a paucity of detail.

    Predictably, the lead-in is about the wonders of a "free" to access version of Complexity. Inevitably, a "Pro" version is mentioned, but with insufficient detail about its price. Given that the website pages have a link to "Enterprise", one anticipates an 'Enterprise version' in the offing. Perhaps, in their pipe dreams, the progenitors of this search engine variant hope eventually to mirror Microsoft's cunning marketing by embedding loss-leaders in the school and university markets.

    Beyond doubt, 'AI' adjuncts to Internet search engines shall emerge in profusion. Also, competition among tacky ad-based versions (or front ends) will whittle down the number of offerings. 'AI' linkage to freely available sources of information, together with reliable assessment and summary of their content, will be of great value to many people. However, only when offered by benevolent entities, such as the Internet Archive, and free of charge, fully functional, and devoid of advertisements, will information imparted be more trustworthily untainted by commercial and ideological considerations. Also envisaged is adoption of 'AI' assistance by 'Robin Hood' outfits like Anna's Archive. Meanwhile, Perplexity and its like can make hay.

  57. Harmon20

    >>...only when an AI engine gives you the sources of its answers as well as an answer, will Google search face a major threat...

    I think that's still a ways off because this isn't part of the core design of the current crop of "AI" engines and the ability to cite sources is beyond their ken. Right now, when I specifically ask the LLMs for sources, they do exactly what they're designed to do - they give me URLs that look very satisfying because they use legit and well known domains and documents so named that they appear to contain the exact information I'm looking for, but they are URLs that point to resources that do not, nor have they ever, existed. (The latter being according to Wayback.)

    They're making up their citations just like they're making up the rest of the answers, but that's exactly what they're designed to do. If they were quoting sources that they are aware of and can cite, then they'd be search engines, not AI's. They're fundamentally different tools that do fundamentally different things. They may, and probably will, converge into a single tool doing a single thing eventually, but at that point we won't have two distinct things called "AI" and "search engine" that we're comparing. (I've not tried Perplexity yet. I'll be interested to see if it behaves any differently than I've experienced so far.)

  58. Tim 11

    The elephant in the room...

    .... is that the way advertising will work in the AI world is the AI will adjust the answers it gives depending on who's paying for advertising, and it will be almost impossible to detect the degree to which this is happening.

    There will not be a clean differentiation between the search results and the adverts like you get at the moment.

  59. davebarnes

    Ads on Google?

    I never see ads on Google.

  60. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

    Simple answer is it never was....

    Its simply propaganda, without any actual evidence, Google has basically been forced up on us.

    1. _andrew

      Suppose that it depends on which "us" you're talking about

      For those of us there at the time, no forcing was required to switch from AltaVista to Google. Towards the end it seemed as though AltaVista would give you a list of 10000 answers (URLs) in no particular order. Yes, the right one was probably in there somewhere, but you'd be better off trawling through Yahoo lists or asking someone than trying each of them in turn. Google had ranking that "worked". That was an edge that has since been both gamed (SEO) and internally corrupted.

      1. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

        Re: Suppose that it depends on which "us" you're talking about

        Thats not evidence at all, thats simply a comparison against AV.

        To be the best there needs to be a test against far more candidates than just a few.

  61. Cronsch

    History repeats itself

    "I fear someone in a garage who is devising something completely new." Bill Gates said in a interview with journalist Ken Auletta. And then Microsoft lost the search-, SoMe and Mobile-OS battles to "garage-companies"; ok Apple was not a garage-company in 2007, but without IxOS and App-store - it was not a tech-giant today.

    Now Google has made exact same failure as Microsoft did 25 years ago. Maybee ChatGPT and Perplexity not were garage-companies at the startup, but they were devising something completely new.

    History repeats itself.

  62. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Thrown away panties

    I've asked Perplexity a very basic question: is it illegal to sniff thrown away panties?

    In response I had to wade through dozen of paragraphs about tolerance, respect and privacy of others.

    1. nobody who matters Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: Thrown away panties

      Well, if you ask a silly question....... :)

    2. JLV Silver badge

      Re: Thrown away panties

      Asking for a friend?

  63. Ian Johnston Silver badge

    I just tried Perplexity with a question which Google's AI summary got wrong. Perplexity's answer was different, but also wrong. Sod that for a game of soldiers.

  64. Ian Johnston Silver badge

    It's a shame to see Cory Doctorow climbing on the lazy, anti-Semitic "Gaza genocide" bandwagon. Sure, Israel's actions in Gaza are horrifying, but if they are trying to commit genocide they are really, really terrible at it: the 45,000 dead there (a number which has only increased by 5,000 since a year ago) is about three days' total for the three main Nazi extermination camps.

    The left generally thinks they can casually refer to genocide in Gaza as if it's an established fact, and they should be challenged on it.

  65. Paul Hovnanian Silver badge
    Trollface

    So, which is the best?

    Shall we Google it?

  66. Persona non grata

    Perplexity doesn't work with a VPN, sod that.

    I don't trust them for precisely this reason and I won't use their data harvester when it wants to tie me to the queries and results.

    This is not the panacea being described here, it's just another data grab where we are the product to be sold.

  67. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Amazon

    Sadly, Amazon is just as bad, if not worse. When searching for a very specific item the results are dominated by things they are trying to sell you, but are not what you asked for, nor after. It would be ok if searching for generic items, but not specific product models.

  68. FrankeeD

    My complaint with Google search is somewhat different. As a research librarian, I regularly use Google to look for “grey literature” - any relevant material published outside the typical academic publishing streams.

    Over the past decade, it’s become more frustrating to use, as it regularly ignores specific discipline-related search terms because it would give me too few results, none of which contain anything they can sell me.

    Spelling autocorrect is a related annoyance where a specialist term is “corrected” to something different, but one that can be overcome by copying and pasting search terms from a word-processing document.

  69. Luggagethecat

    Bing for the win!

    Personally Ive been using Bing as my go to search engine for the last year!

    Ever since it integrated chatgpt/copilot its results are scary good!

    Sorry Google its been a good run, but no one wins em all!

    1. nobody who matters Silver badge

      Re: Bing for the win!

      Seriously?????

      I've experienced the exact opposite. Both of them are crap nowadays.

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