compared to many years ago?  Sponsored links.  Store links.  Look for reviews, and depending on popularity of the subject 95% or more that pops up will NOT be a review of the requested subject.

 

Normally I do my own research, but if anyone knows of another search engine like Google used to be, I'd like to know its name.  Thanks.

It's still my main one. I've used Bing some in the past and the old Yahoo one but Google is still better than those two. Usually when I search something, it's going to be fairly specific and I like to use the "site:" feature to filter out the fluff and just search a specific site (like this one). 

Google still does it for me - of course if I'm searching for a particular piece of information, I use the Advanced Search engine instead of the generic one.

Google Advanced Search

I use DuckDuckGo.com for search because of their privacy policy.  I mostly use chatGPT when I want to learn something which is the goal of 90% of my searches.

Not a fan of Google. As a small business owner | entrepreneur, I find their business practices monopolistic, overpriced, complicated, not-user friendly. But I am tied to Google through my Android phone.

 

Like @Tennessee Boy I use DuckDuckGo for search.

 

Note: I won't even mention Google's policies related to the "google-doodle"...not a fan. They lost me...

I would trade the entirety of AI if we could go back to how Google was 10 years ago

i still prefer google to bing or duckduck..... i think google is just easier. not aware they began using ai. 

for a more ai-like experience, there's perplexity, which is right half the time.  but it's surprising... can be super useful...

ai is here to stay - sorry to say... u no, it's like hal 3000. we'll discover too late that ai/hal 3000 eventually will decide we are irrelevant...............  unless, it already has

bwaaaaaaaaaaaa hahahaha

41 minutes ago, fishhugger said:

not aware they began using ai. 

Well....kinda. On some queries, you will see generated responses on top of the normal results underneath.  They are not combined. They are clearly labeled.

 

Personally, I don't like the AI responses and skip them immediately.

Usually what I want to know is on here. So don’t use it much 

I study world history along with many other things and I’ve been using/testing meta AI and it’s quite good and blazing fast..haven’t tried Grok yet though.. 

Google monitors everything you do through your android phone,  gmail,  google maps,  Chrome browser and your search history.   It knows you better than your family knows you.  It gives you the search results it knows you want to receive.  If you don’t like the results it’s your own fault.  😆

I haven't had anything useful come from AI other than entertaining images of a half man half fish on top of the eiffel tower. It's kind of a useless technology that none of us asked for, but is being foisted upon the general public. I don't like it at all

Remember the good old days, when we watched Terminator movies, or various other movies and that gave us fear of AI and mass surveillance.

Now we choose to actually pay for both.

 

I am young, but i dont want any of this. Id rather go back to the stone ages.

 

(And isnt AI just a bunch of weird cartoon like silly images? Or giving respones that are completely the opposite of what history has taught?) To me thats not worth bringing Arnold out of retirement.

What I don't like about Google is if I'm searching for a product, Amazon floods the first page and more. I want more choices.

i use the ai perplexity a LOT. it's actually unbelievably useful. the more clearly you ask something, the more text you give it re: your question, the more accurate it is.  perplexity is great for problems that otherwise would require YOU to sift thru a bunch of pages of text, even from various far off sources.

and that's why i foresee a hal 3000-type moment.  ai is just so useful...we will become more and more dependent on it.   eventually the ai's will decide --- what do we need these people for.........  let them go to their doom.  that'll happen about 2060, lol. 

but i hate bing. it seems like a worthless pos, and i don't know how to get it off my phone.  everytime i try to simply go to a url, bing  intercedes with a bunch of useless cr*p.

I try to use Duck Duck Go all the time. Sometimes I still use Google, but I try not to.

Back in the day, the first link after you searched was usually what you were looking for. Then it became the second on the list, first place reserved for “sponsored” links. Now there are at least 3 sponsored links first, and the unsponsored links still are more related to the sponsored links than what you searched for. Soon, the entire first page will be sponsored links.