I’ve said (and read) it before: the concept of a great search engine is exactly at odds with advertising. A good search engine gives accurate results fast, while the purpose of advertising is to show users what advertisers pay to show them. In other words, it’s the difference between showing users what they want to see, versus showing users what advertisers want them to see.
Google knows that the more irrelevant results it returns, the longer you spend looking, which translates into more opportunities to show ads.
I’ve just done the same search as in the article on Chrome, Firefox and DuckDuckGo
Google served 5 ads before showing me M&S’ website
DDG showed me an ad for Temu then M&S’ website
Firefox showed me no ad, thanks ublock, and straight to M&S’ website
Firefox isn’t a search engine, though?
Google always seems to default to thinking that I am looking to buy something. It’s very nauseating. This is what Google shopping was supposed to be for. Search should be completely separated from shopping.
from the company that now completely ignores all the search syntax they trained us on – when
-,+,"..."actually meant somethingCory Doctorow’s post this morning – Google’s enshittification memos
“Google search is so bad you might as well ask Jeeves.”
