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This has been pointed out here before, but that's not entirely inaccurate for a significant number of users, whose stack is:

- Entering a query that is sent to Google by one of many channels (google.com, browser omnibox, Android omnibox)

- Choosing a result from a Google search

- Pages following guidelines defined by Google

- With ads displayed, published and managed through Google-owned platforms

- Atop standards initially implemented in Google Chrome, with design influenced by them

- Displayed on a browser made by Google

- Retrieved through protocols often designed with influence from Google

- From an IP resolved by Google Public DNS

- The client device is running on an operating system made by Google

> I'll wager that the average not-technical user who ventures to Google doesn't understand 1) what exactly a search engine is 2) alternatives exist.

I have seen my father type a web address into a google search page because he doesn’t understand that he can use the location field to go directly to that address. I corrected this behavior the first time I saw it. He was doing it again the next time I visited.

This is a man with a high level of education and a healthy mind. He’s utterly lost on many of the basic concepts of his computer. The thing is, it works for him and I would never know he was making this mistake without watching him because he still gets the desired result in a roundabout way.

I'm not sure it's a mistake. Doing a search seems better for non-technical users since you get spelling correction, and you're more likely to get a decent result if you mis-remember the domain name.

It's not better. Because often the top result is a paid ad for that result. This is bad for a couple reasons:

- It's a tax on the services you use who have to pay to be the top result, you burden companies you patronize when you do this. When you search for Dell.com in search and click the top link for Dell, Dell just had to pay a couple quarters to not have you redirected to a seedy scam site instead. Times millions for every other person who does this.

- Google Ads allow advertisers to spoof addresses, and display a different destination address than where clicking the link actually takes you. I've seen amazon.com, bestbuy.com, and even, hilariously, youtube.com hijacked in very authentic-looking malicious Google Ads at the top of Google Search. For security reasons, you should never, ever click on a Google Ad.

This seems like a good argument in favor of understanding the difference between ads and search results. (Unfortunately it's more subtle than it should be.) Or maybe installing an ad blocker.

Ad? You'd let your father browse the web without an ad blocker?!?

Although I would like a button to occasionally turn off "smart searching" that was using my personal info, in general searches that take into account your history and location produce better results. You can also do this manually by just opening a private tab.

I also just searched "Best Museums in Las Vegas" on Google and Duck Duck go, and DDG does not produce as many quality results in the top 10 as Google. They do make up for it, if you are doing a really micro search, because they list soooooo many more results on the first page. But they are definitely still vulnerable to Groupon spam in a way Google searches are not.

Your wager is correct. The average user is pathetically ignorant of how computers or the internet work. I'll never understand why people eagerly try to understand how their cars work, but when it comes to computers they'll just throw their hands up and be proud of their ignorance, always relying on others to help them with extremely basic tasks. You don't ask a friend to put your windshield wipers on for you.

>pathetically ignorant

Read The Inmates are Running the Asylum, and you might understand that better. It helped me to see how pathetically unhelpful and badly designed interfaces are everywhere, something I accepted and took for granted before.

A couple of metaphors he uses, there or in About Face: Programmers are like those into extreme sports, revelling in the difficulties of working with computers, but most people aren't like that. When they board an aeroplane, they want to sit down and get where they're going without concerning themselves with the details. Programmers head for the cockpit.

Well, similarly a lot of folks think Facebook is the internet, and they use Facebook's search bar instead of Google.

Probably something similar holds for Amazon.

Agree. Google is a verb. Watch TV or in movies, and they all say "Google it". Never seen one say Bing it.

Or DDG it.

Yesterday I was trying to find organizations registered to the address 1011 1st Ave, which primarily belongs to the Archdiocese of New York. So I gave Google this query: "1011 1st ave" "new york" -archdiocese

Many of the results do not include both of these quoted strings. So Google went from discarding your search terms and requiring quotes, to even discarding your quoted terms. I had to fire up duckduckgo to complete my search, which is something I never use but I had no choice.