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Comment by furyofantares | Hacker News Reader

> If you searched Google for a movie review in 2005, you'd get a review. Today, you get paid search results, ads, third-party cookies, trackers, newsletter prompts, notification requests, and, if you're lucky – a movie review. No matter what you search for, SEO-hacked content farms will blot out the sun.

This resonates, but I tried it, and it looks false. On both kagi and google, for both an old and a new movie (finding nemo and dune 2), the first result is a movie review that doesn't seem overly laden in shit.

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Good catch!

I had originally written "travel plans"/"workout routine", but changed it to "movie reviews".

If you try to plan a trip to Dubai with Google, the first 4 posts are sponsored. With workout routines, The first post for me has ads + newsletter prompt + notification access request.

I should change it back :)

Why are you not using an adblocker if your current experience bothers you?

I do use uBlock Origin. It removes sponsored search results, but it won't do away with the poorly written articles just below.

More importantly, not everyone uses an ad-blocker (especially mobile users). If installing a browser extension becomes necessary to deem a browser worthy of use, I would think that's a problem.

the web is nigh-on unusable without an ad-blocker.

When I was young no one really questioned ads in television shows, when I got to uni I kind of stopped watching anything but cable. Then netflix came out and I dropped cable alltogether. Every once in a while I find myself watching television at someone elses house and the constant ads completely destroy any enjoyment of the entertainment, even if I never really questioned it as a kid.

that's how the web is for people who don't run ad-block. They have no idea what it can be.

Fortunately, with web environment integrity websites will be able to force you to use an approved browser (Chrome) with a verified local binary (that will forbid an adblocker and report your browsing to Google) and you won't be able to do anything about it.

I think a better question is: Why do you insist on using Google?

There are several search engines on the WWW. Google is just one, and I hear people complaining about that one a lot. I don't use it personally, and I haven't done so for more than a decade. Life goes on perfectly fine without it.

(no, I don't use Kagi or Marginalia either, it's not one of those posts.)

No search engine is immune to LLM generated mumbo jumbo. Google makes an exceptional example at being a terrible search eninge despite majority market share, but as AI continues to pollute the internet, all search engines will deteriorate.

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