> A spokesperson for Google tells the BBC that the company only launches changes to Search after rigorous testing confirms that the shift will be helpful for users, and that the company gives website owners help, resources and opportunities for feedback on their Search rankings.
If you believe this I've got a bridge to sell you. The idea that Google does anything other than to improve its bottom line (in the _shortest_ possible timeline) is lunacy. Just look at Google constant short-sightedness and their parasitic ad team pushing the search team (before taking it over effectively) to find ways to increase the searches (which means a worse user experience).
Of course Google doesn't care about quality sites, they care about what makes them the most money, the user be damned. Anyone with an ounce of morality or care about the actual user experience was run out or relegated long ago.
Sell me another bridge then. This is why I believe it:
> Google does anything to improve its bottom line (in the _shortest_ possible timeline)
If the results suck, people would find alternatives. Look at how many techies installed Chrome for their parents and grandparents when MSIE was pre-installed and this was an easier-to-use, standards-compliant, and more performant option. It further snowballed from there. It takes a few years for word to get around but they're well aware that providing useful results is the only way to stay relevant
The problem lies in how Google goes about doing this. People like the (mostly) honest opinions you find on reddit. People like the answer boxes at the top and look no further. My girlfriend is one of the smartest people I know and she doesn't bother reading any further. Any time we look something up together it's a discussion point that I prefer to blindly scroll by the summary and she prefers to not click any result because the answer was already given. One of the most recent times, I could prove the quoted answer was wrong (for once) and that the results clearly gave a better picture in a few more seconds, but it doesn't kill the overall trend where people use this type of summary.
Quite the opposite: a friend made a fun little game that got popular tiktok. I talk to players on discord (because of course walled garden discord is their preferred platform). Any time the topic of searching or learning something comes up, most of them demonstrate 100% of their searches start on chatgpt and usually end there, too
Google knows better than I do (I'm sure they've done proper studies) what they need to do to stay relevant and their answer as of today is adding generated text output that tries to answer your query without having to even look at any results. The summary box on steroids
That this kills small websites is not their problem. All of this may be at the cost of honest content online, but do a Duckduckgo search for comparison: many queries result in pagefuls of content farms that pretend to be review or explanatory websites, looking legit but when you read beyond the first three sentences it's repetitive, baseless, uninsightful, and altogether useless or unreliable at best. I wouldn't know how to distinguish content farms from legit opinion websites at an algorithmic level (perhaps an LLM can make a guess that's often correct, if we think LLM vetting a desirable future), and apparently Google doesn't either because they choose to push sites like reddit and quora instead which, being big brands, everyone already knows are legit sites. I never heard of the air purifier review site the BBC article focuses on, so I can't notice their omission in the search results. Getting content farms is noticeable though and makes me consider which alternative to Duckduckgo I should try out. This thread has been mentioning Kagi, so that'll be something I try later today. Notice how quickly I'm ready to switch away once I find there's something with better results out there
In short, scrapping small or even obscure sites (that we all love, if we can find them) in favor of big names, and replacing needing to look at results yourself, is what Google's internal studies apparently show will keep Google Search relevant and I don't see any evidence to cast doubt upon that. Providing what people evidently want allows them to say what you quoted with a straight face
> If the results suck, people would find alternatives. Look at how many techies installed Chrome for their parents and grandparents when MSIE was pre-installed and this was an easier-to-use, standards-compliant, and more performant option. It further snowballed from there. It takes a few years for word to get around but they're well aware that providing useful results is the only way to stay relevant
The results often do suck and people are actively finding alternatives (mostly techies). No search engine I've tried has really reached the bar where I'd push my friends/family to switch but they are getting closer and closer. MSIE had a lot of momentum and it wasn't FF that techies installed, it was Chrome, all that to say just because we haven't seen a Google replacement yet doesn't mean we won't. Furthermore people's frustration with Google search is directly what has lead to the alternatives that have been gaining popularity (again, mostly in techie groups so far). With your logic I could have said back in 2009 that "If IE sucked people would find alternatives", momentum is hard to fight but it can be done.
> they're well aware that providing useful results is the only way to stay relevant
If this post [0] is to be believed then providing useful results is (now) a side effect of wanting to drive traffic to show ads and it's completely valid to degrade the search results if it means people spend more time searching (and thus see more ads). No doubt they have to provide value still but there is nothing saying that's what they are optimizing for, if it happens as a side-effect then so be it.
I really have no idea how to reply to the rest of your post which can be summed up to "Google knows best" which I reject completely.
I currently use Kagi but I'm not over the moon with it and it has its own issues [1].
If you believe this I've got a bridge to sell you. The idea that Google does anything other than to improve its bottom line (in the _shortest_ possible timeline) is lunacy. Just look at Google constant short-sightedness and their parasitic ad team pushing the search team (before taking it over effectively) to find ways to increase the searches (which means a worse user experience).
Of course Google doesn't care about quality sites, they care about what makes them the most money, the user be damned. Anyone with an ounce of morality or care about the actual user experience was run out or relegated long ago.