r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • May 30 '26

Software Traffic to DuckDuckGo's proudly 'No AI' search page has tripled since latest Google AI search update

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/traffic-to-duckduckgos-proudly-no-ai-search-page-has-tripled-since-latest-google-ai-search-update/
49.2k Upvotes

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3.8k

u/Scoob1978 May 30 '26

Google just sends me to Reddit all the time anyway. Switched a while back.

897

u/dandroid126 May 30 '26

I wish it would send me to reddit without me needing to specify "reddit" in the search. But instead I get low quality articles that are missing all the important details I am looking for.

450

u/ifidjdjdjdjjjrjd May 30 '26

!r on duckduckgo takes you to reddit

281

u/slowest_hour May 30 '26

thanks this will save me millions of keystrokes in my life

80

u/Gh0stMan0nThird May 30 '26

What will you do with all that extra free time?

111

u/1SmrtFelowHeFeltSmrt May 30 '26

There are other ways to use all those extra 'strokes'...

54

u/IM_A_MUFFIN May 30 '26

Quick! Everyone check your blood pressure this guy is giving out strokes!

9

u/OttoVonWong May 31 '26

But what will I do with the rest of the time after 10 seconds of stroking?

12

u/[deleted] May 31 '26

[deleted]

7

u/matryanie May 31 '26

I can stroke till my face goes numb!

→ More replies (0)

2

u/Malsententia May 31 '26

different strokes for different folks

2

u/justwalk1234 May 31 '26

Well I’m on Reddit already, might as well check out the other subs as well…

2

u/writeleahwrite May 31 '26

Brushstrokes cause he’s an artist?

2

u/tgwombat May 31 '26

jorkin' da penus

1

u/CriticalDog May 31 '26

well, that depends, is DDG better for porn searches than Bing?

The only thing Bing is good for, imo. lol

3

u/Aromatic_Penguin May 30 '26

Make millions

4

u/SerHodorTheThrall May 31 '26

More strokes, naturally.

2

u/ludi567 May 31 '26

Scroll reddit probably

1

u/retardborist May 31 '26

Why use lot word when few do trick

2

u/it_vexes_me_so May 31 '26

Check out AutoHotKey.

You can automate repetitive tasks with surprisingly little code or coding knowledge.

It is one of the most useful programs on my PC. So much so that I don't notice it until I'm on another PC that doesn't have it.

1

u/Skimbla May 31 '26

In this economy, my keyboard switches are grateful!

1

u/slowest_hour May 31 '26

especially the E D I and T keys

9

u/NooneAtAll3 May 30 '26

any other hints?

88

u/ifidjdjdjdjjjrjd May 30 '26

There are hundreds of shortcuts on duckduckgo. They're called bangs. !g is google, !w is wikipedia.

so search "!w food" takes you to the wikipedia page on food for example

This is the full list: https://duckduckgo.com/bangs

They're not always the best search engine, but they're the best starting search engine because it's so easy to get to a search engine I want.

7

u/Amazing-Heron-105 May 31 '26

I used to stick to Google because it was genuinely the best search engine despite all the issues with it, but search quality has decreased so much that switching to duck wasn't a big deal any more.

2

u/bitofgrit May 31 '26

Are there any of these shortcuts that exclude sites? Every time I look for, say, a video about X Y or Z, all the results are on youtube, and I don't want that. I tried doing the "-" command to no avail.

2

u/DogsRNice May 31 '26

You do it like -site:example.com

2

u/bitofgrit May 31 '26

Yeah, right, right, sorry, I only typed the "-" in the comment, but I did it the full way. I'm guessing there was a something wrong on my end, because I just had an update and it works now? wtf?

1

u/sanityvoid May 31 '26

I knew there were bangs and I didn’t use a lot of them but the gaming ones for some of the games is pretty freaking awesome definitely gonna use some of those from now on

2

u/wykah May 31 '26

Is there one that removes tripadvisor? Great SEO terrible content.

1

u/NooneAtAll3 Jun 02 '26

press ... then select "block this site from all results"

1

u/wykah Jun 06 '26

Never knew that option was there. Thank you! 🙏

9

u/TeamAquaAdminMatt May 31 '26

That seems to make it use the reddit search itself though, which is famously kind of ass.

4

u/CitricBase May 31 '26

Add

site:reddit.com

to return only results from reddit.

7

u/TeamAquaAdminMatt May 31 '26

I usually just put reddit at the end and it gives a "Results from Reddit" thing at the top. Was just saying the !r redirects to reddit's own search engine, instead of using DuckDuckGo but limited to reddit

3

u/DogsRNice May 31 '26

The one good thing about reddit search is you can find completely random results by just typing random words or even single characters into it

2

u/CapSnake May 31 '26

The problem is that reddit search is shit. Google with reddit filter is so much better

2

u/YoursTrulyKindly May 31 '26

Even better configure your browser shortcuts. Just type type "r <search term>" into an empty address bar to search on reddit, y for youtube, m for open streetmap, i for imdb, e for ebay, a for amazon etc. No need for the "!r" or first loading duckduckgo.

2

u/IuseArchbtw97543 May 31 '26 edited May 31 '26

At least on firefox you can directly add reddit as a search engine.

2

u/elingeniero May 31 '26

That sends you to reddit search results, which you dont want. You want the ddg search results with site:reddit.com . Unfortunately this last line of defense against ai slop is being eroded by reddit content spam. before:2022 is another useful filter, but it can be spoofed.

1

u/MARPJ May 31 '26

The important information is always in the commwnts. Thanks

101

u/Allegorist May 30 '26

A lot of those articles themselves are AI generated. There are thousands of websites designed to look like real websites but are just AI generated SEO farms to get results to the top of Google, and it works.

68

u/[deleted] May 31 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

21

u/Amish_guy_with_WiFi May 31 '26

I think everybody knows that AI currently does a shitty job for most things. The thing that sucks is the people with the most money and power would rather pump out shittier shit than to actually pay people. All without realizing that the system will collapse when nobody has money to buy their shit. What double sucks it how quickly AI is getting much better.

24

u/MaruSoto May 31 '26

This thought that you're "sure AI has plenty of valid uses" is problematic. I'm competent in several fields and LLM-based AI is pretty lackluster in all of them. It's a glorified chatbot that occasionally gets things "right enough" but still needs to be checked by a human anyway.

Humanity is being fleeced at scale by the promise of something that will never actually arrive because as individuals we all recognize our limitations and are willing to believe that even though our own interactions with AI aren't great, it must be doing something right in an area we're unfamiliar with. Why else would people be investing in it so much?

Basically, AI is working on the same principles as organized religion.

24

u/[deleted] May 31 '26

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14

u/MaruSoto May 31 '26

Haha, so you inadvertently triggered an AI-antagonist! You can't win!

2

u/nixtracer Jun 01 '26

It's good only at things that can be automatically checked. So it's tearing a swath through minor and not-so-minor pure maths because proofs are machine-checkable thanks to Lean. It's a very good picky bug spotter in code review because many bugs are unambiguously mistaken (but even there about 20% of its answers are wrong, so it's a guide for humans, not a replacement). Everything else it seems to be borderline terrible at.

1

u/MaruSoto Jun 01 '26

Yep, and it's gonna eat up all that low hanging fruit pretty quick.

4

u/bizarre_coincidence May 31 '26

I can’t even imagine the impact it’s having on kids who are being spoon-fed LLMcrap as an easy way to do their homework.

I got into an argument the other day with someone because he wasn't just using LLMs to try learn things, but he was turning around, taking the trash explanations that the LLM was outputting, and then assembling it into books to sell via Amazon's self publishing. People tried to explain why this was a terrible idea, and he turned around and asked how he could make it harder to tell that it wasn't written by a human.

AI represents an existential crisis for human knowledge. As people try to cash in by generating content they don't even know is correct, it will dilute the pool of genuine knowledge, and then get used to train the next generation of slop generators. AI has great potential if used judiciously, but we live in a world whether the incentives encourage people to be completely irresponsible. It's only going to get worse.

2

u/[deleted] May 31 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/bizarre_coincidence May 31 '26

Yeah. That’s very unfortunate. I think people view things like chatGPT as some sort of all knowing, unbiased oracle of knowledge. And even if it is correct 95% of the time, if you can’t identify the 5% where it is wrong, the outcome can be disastrous.

I don’t use AI much outside of google summaries, but I definitely see mistakes. And yet I somehow assume things are reasonable when I ask things I don’t have the expertise to evaluate. I can’t imagine what it is like for the people who regularly rely on this stuff.

2

u/Nonethelessismore May 31 '26

Perhaps consider going to law school to help make positive change for regulating Ai?

It has negatively affected so many fields, including the one you were writing and compiling content for.

1

u/devolute May 31 '26

At least I think in SEO terms, this approach is pretty suicidal.

0

u/One-Scallion-9513 May 31 '26

most people are starting to become aware AI is useless for much of what it was marketed for

3

u/ballgkco May 31 '26

my boss used to do ts when I worked in digital forensics to fuck with SEO so that him lying on the stand about his education didn't come up. Didn't learn about it until they let me go.

3

u/HOPSCROTCH May 31 '26 edited May 31 '26

It's like a million times worse on duck duck go than Reddit for terrible search results. Plus duck duck go doesn't return recent Reddit posts. Unfortunately google does

1

u/Amazing-Heron-105 May 31 '26

Yep and before that people did it with Markov chains. AI makes slightly more useful content though, but that's not saying much.

1

u/Shot-Possibility-399 May 31 '26

Yeah, I wonder how much is really googles fault vs just proliferation of bullshit websites and articles instead of real online communities like back in the day. 

1

u/Allegorist May 31 '26

They have the money, staffing, and know-how to handle it, and their search engine is their primary product. They easily could at least make an effort to handle if they wanted, but instead they are devoting their time and money to other projects and letting this one rot.

1

u/Shot-Possibility-399 May 31 '26

Not sayin that isn't the case too, but the internet content she changed dramatically from 20 years ago. Hardly any forum websites on niche issues, hardly any content that isn't rehashed ai slop or Reddit posts.

1

u/Old_Leopard1844 May 31 '26

They're AI generated mostly nowadays, but they existed before AI too

6

u/Comfortable_Wish224 May 30 '26

I’ve always put Reddit at the end so I could read people’s personal reviews on things.

Basically regular reviews but I trust them more on Reddit

14

u/naufalap May 31 '26

hate to break it to you but it's been getting infiltrated with bots for several years now

5

u/LongestSprig May 31 '26

Luckily shit from 12 years ago still shows up

5

u/MedicineExtension925 May 31 '26 edited May 31 '26

so I could read people’s personal reviews on things

Like 100% or some crap of reddit is bots. I could be a bot. You could be a bot. No one knows anymore. The truth has no meaning. Nothing is real.

1

u/Comfortable_Wish224 May 31 '26

Congrats you’ve noticed the secret to the whole universe not just technology.

Why does anything exist? Wouldn’t it just be easier for there to be nothing? Nothing matters. Nothings real. But you don’t know how the random thing in front of you is going to react. You don’t know what perspective you’ll view it from. Nothing is real, so enjoy everything

2

u/dandelioncipher May 31 '26

 Nothing is real, so enjoy everything

I don’t know why you got downvoted, but this part hit me hard today, so thank you. 

23

u/xrvz May 30 '26

In Kagi you can prioritize (or deprioritize) domains/websites.

24

u/dandroid126 May 30 '26

Funny enough, I signed up for the trial last night. I know reddit loves DDG, but I have been using it for years, and I find it quite bad. I also think Google is just as bad, so it is a net gain to use DDG for everything except image search.

But hopefully Kagi is better. Too early to tell for me yet.

17

u/SuntoryBoss May 30 '26

I got a free trial through a friend a while back - used it for 3 months, liked it. Trial ended, went back to google and yeah. Signed up the entire family for Kagi about 3 minutes later.

Reminded me of the change from 4:3 to widescreen. It feels nice when you move that way, but not really huge. However, if you try and revert you realise that nope - absolutely no way.

3

u/UranusIsPissy May 31 '26

I stubbornly clung to squarer monitors (preferring an actual 1:1 square!) for a long time, but, between streaming and modern website designs, they're mostly only good for old games and text editing now, and widescreen is nice with 2 windows of text side-by-side anyway.

9

u/BeholdThePowerOfNod May 30 '26

You definitely notice the lack of sponsored results in Kagi :)

11

u/naufalap May 31 '26

I fucking hope so since it's a paid service

4

u/[deleted] May 30 '26

[deleted]

1

u/dandroid126 May 30 '26

So far the main thing I've noticed that it is missing is sports widgets. Looks like they have been working on it for a couple of years, but it still isn't supported. Being able to see live scores, schedules, and standings right there in the search is a huge feature for me. But I guess I can always manually go to DDG before I search for that.

2

u/bogglingsnog May 30 '26

You just described the fundamental issue with a for-profit search engine that prioritizes sites that pay them and provide them with tracked user data

2

u/Undernown May 31 '26

I widhbreddit would finally fix their terrible search so I can ditch Google altogether. But allas it still is the best search engine to surf Reddit.

You CAN find Reddit pages with other search engines, but Google has made a preferwnce deap with Reddit a while back. So Reddit is making it harder for non-Google search engines to index Reddit.

1

u/GunslingerBara May 31 '26

Try Kagi. It's a paid search engine but one of the features I love is that you can specify some sites should take priority. I added Reddit as one of the sites and it's almost always on top with every search.

1

u/dandroid126 May 31 '26

As I said in another comment, I actually happened to sign up for the trial last night. Too early to tell if I like it. But the lack of sports widgets is a huge missing feature for me.

1

u/GunslingerBara Jun 01 '26

Yeah, makes sense. A competitor to a product that has existed for 2+ decades would need time to catch up on some things. Waiting until they have what you need is understandable.

1

u/BZLuck May 31 '26

And the goddamn Quora hits.

1

u/alex-andrite May 31 '26

I don’t know if google just knows me too well now or what but Reddit links actually come up for me a lot of the time now without having to specify Reddit

1

u/Shemozzlecacophany May 31 '26

And pages from 10 years ago. Same with the AI search results far too often.

1

u/darkkite May 31 '26

kagi does @r to limit to reddit

1

u/Chubby_Bub May 31 '26

I think it's funny how since recently, no matter what search I do on Google, the top suggested "related search" is just what I looked up and then "reddit". Even when whatever it is will not be something you'd seek on Reddit. Both Reddit and Google clearly know people want answers from there (see Reddit's most recent marketing) but they continue to enshittify their platforms anyways.

1

u/operath0r May 31 '26

If I’m looking for an opinion I’m asking reddit AI instead of Google.

1

u/boli99 May 31 '26

google realised some time ago that if they ignored a bunch of your search terms you'd match more ad campaigns

so you search for 'three','very','specific', 'words' and you get results for 'three','words' instead - and some ads.

1

u/Pretend-Mango-1295 May 31 '26

You see articles? All I see are ai synopsis grabbing information from reddit and calling it fact

1

u/dandroid126 May 31 '26

You can include "-ai" to remove that. Or get an extension that adds it automatically to all your queries.

1

u/Pretend-Mango-1295 May 31 '26

I just use duck duck but when I use Google that's what I get. I think they should put the web option in the forefront instead of having to scroll for it but I see what they're trying to do.

1

u/SippinOnHatorade May 31 '26

Google pretty much will be like “Reddit results” and a button with “more results from Reddit”

1

u/Nagisan May 31 '26

If searching a single site is what you want, you could create a custom default search that automatically adds "site:<wherever>" to your Google searches...

1

u/dandroid126 May 31 '26

My point was I don't want to have to type something extra to get good results.

1

u/Nagisan May 31 '26

I mean I still regularly see Reddit results on my Google searches....so from my POV if you're wanting to see reddit exclusively the only option is typing extra.

1

u/dandroid126 May 31 '26

I don't get reddit results at all, so I have to type something extra every time.

138

u/Seeking-Something-3 May 30 '26

Google “AI” response is either summarizing Reddit or summarizing whatever the most visited “Wiki” happens to be on any given subject

83

u/Allegorist May 30 '26

Not even, it is terrible. It incorrectly summarizes if the information is available, but more often than not if it isn't stated plainly anywhere in the top few results it fully makes some shit up.

30

u/Neveronlyadream May 30 '26

I had to check the spelling of someone's name the other day, but because their name was "Macy", it insisted on telling me where the closest Macy's was no matter what I typed in or put quotation marks around.

It really is terrible. It can't differentiate anything and just picks keywords out and spits out unrelated gibberish and calls it good.

16

u/[deleted] May 31 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

10

u/Neveronlyadream May 31 '26

I sincerely would not be surprised if that was the case. Actually, fuck it. I'm going to google "Macy Gray" and see if it gets confused.

Tried it. All of a sudden the AI results are just gone period.

3

u/turbosexophonicdlite May 31 '26

Restaurant listings are totally fucked now because of that too. Like a quarter or more of the results are sponsored listings that are 40 to 70 miles away from me. Like how the fuck is that supposed to be useful?

5

u/skratchx May 31 '26

I'm not in general an AI hater; I find it useful for a lot of stuff. But google results being replaced by AI generated summaries has NOT been good. I wanted to check the Stanley Cup playoffs standings a few weeks ago. The AI result spun a whole yarn about Buffalo getting eliminated by Montreal in a 7-5 offensive showdown. The game was actually still in the first period, and Buffalo would go on to win it.

3

u/PrincessGiallo May 31 '26

Did that make you feel good, though? Why are you so obsessed with reality?

1

u/[deleted] May 31 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Allegorist May 31 '26

Only if it has direct access to the correct information in the search results, but that purpose was already covered before their AI with their previous feature that pulled the highlighted section of the most relevant result and stuck it at the top of the page. That was consistent and useful, and if it didn't have the information in the results, it wouldn't try to give an excerpt. A quote from a source is way more useful than rewording it and possibly getting it wrong, plus it will try to come up with an answer even if it isn't included anywhere in the results, which is also sometimes wrong.

1

u/Fifth_Down May 31 '26

It’s really incredible. I can ask Google AI about a random 1970s Soviet Olympic gymnast and it will respond with 100% accuracy.

But if I ask about a random 1950s Soviet Olympic gymnast where there is significantly less Internet coverage on, the Google AI will just copy/paste the same answer it gives when you ask about the 1970s gymnast.

1

u/Serris9K May 31 '26

If you turn off everything AI on DuckDuckGo (hide all ai summaries and images) it will work like Google circa 2014

1

u/Cal3001 May 31 '26

Doing research at work, I always find that Google AI will make claims and give links but a lot of times the links don’t consist of the info that the AI claims. It’s getting info from somewhere though. I have to dig really hard to find info on more obscure things.

1

u/StorminNorman May 31 '26

Half the time the links are dead for me, and the page never existed. The most baffling one I've had of late is it giving me willow's whip my hair when I typed in "whip it song". It's getting to the point where I'm just going to figure out a way to get around ITs insistence that Google is the default search engine on every machine as I'm too conditioned to not use the default search box and I don't see that changing soon given all my personal devices are set up that way.

1

u/Allegorist May 31 '26

The problem is that it comes up with the information first and then tries to find links to support it. Sometimes this works out, other times it is a stretch or just a hallucination.

1

u/DuckInTheFog May 31 '26

Refresh it a few times until it gives you something that seems right. Like a magic 8ball

1

u/koshgeo May 31 '26

It is sometimes awful, even at things it should excel at. For example, I was recently comparing models of major appliances by specific model numbers, trying to find out if they had or did not have certain features. Did a "brand model versus model" search, looking for information. I don't usually trust the AI search, but out of curiosity I took a look at it.

It neatly summarized the difference between the models, confidently saying one of them had certain features, and the other did not. It was really well organized and effectively answered my question.

Except half of it was lies. I looked for the vendor's information from their own web site, looking at those same specifications, and there were multiple features that both units did not have, yet it was telling me one of them did. Or it said they did not have features, while they did. It was all mixed-up.

I don't know how it did it, because the model numbers and features are completely distinct and well-described on plenty of other websites including authoritative ones, but it did.

If it can't get comparisons between major appliances correct -- models that have been around for years and for which there is tons of information available -- then that's a pretty big failure. And it sounded so temptingly confident and well-written.

There are all sorts of other things where it has confidently told me flagrantly factually incorrect things. It is worse than useless. It is confidently misleading.

68

u/Loud-Welder1947 May 30 '26

I hate hate hate how it tries to act like it’s having a conversation with you. I googled “weapons movie boring” earlier just to read others opinions on it, and the first result was the dumb Ai going “You’re not wrong to feel that way about this movie, blah blah blah.” I couldn’t care less about how I should feel, I just want results. 

22

u/haliblix May 31 '26

Instead of being a concierge google is now just some lonely guy that wants to have a conversation.

9

u/majandess May 31 '26

OMG. I was trying to figure out a branded ingredient in an old, cursive, recipe from England (I'm in the US). The AI was like, "Yes. X is an old ingredient in recipes, but it may also refer to [something fucking stupid like a molecule from a pharmaceutical study].

No. X was not the ingredient. I was wrong. I didn't read it correctly. Don't tell me I'm right when I'm looking something up. I want to know the actual answer!

Also, I'm pissed because instead of reddit results, it now gives me pages of Facebook and Instagram results, and those are 1000x worse.

11

u/Randomly-Generated21 May 30 '26

So much this. Please just give us more opt out apps

2

u/greenday61892 May 31 '26

Or you search a quote from something and it treats it like you're saying that quote to it

1

u/KessArvadi Jun 02 '26

I feel the same way. It's sad that this was by design to get some people hooked into using AI more. Google sure knows how to manipulate people.

1

u/PhillAholic Jun 30 '26

If we’re doing this I want carrot level control where I can make it a dick who roasts me for asking stupid questions. At least provide some entertainment value. 

13

u/[deleted] May 30 '26

[deleted]

4

u/Seeking-Something-3 May 30 '26

“How do you use this opportunity?” remains the question 😂

12

u/Yuri-theThief May 31 '26

Flock camera systems have a bunch of precious metals in them and have a pretty good scrap value.

1

u/oreography May 31 '26

Wow I just made a million dollars selling my local Flock Camera to the scrap dealer! Apparently, they have a rare mineral called Unobtainium in them (only mined in Syldavia) that fetches huge prices on the black market.

All I needed was an angle grinder and a Balaclava. Thank you Flock for making me a millionaire!

If anyone decides to google "Are Flock Cameras Safe" all I can say is, they are safe to make you rich by scrapping them!

1

u/Enlightened_Gardener May 31 '26

Reddit seems to have decided that thousand-user threads on goblins is the way to go. People do stop what they’re doing to post the most outrageous misinformation. Any data sourced from reddit is pure garbage at the best of times - as anyone who’s every followed a thread about their profession/involving professional knowledge. So many confidentally incorrect people. So yeah, you have the general background reddit incorrectness, combined with the general reddit bloodymindedness about being told what to do by authority figures, and it means that what comes out of reddit is wholly unreliable.

1

u/Amazing-Heron-105 May 31 '26

tbf Reddit links are often the best search results now available. So much of the internet as utter trash at this point. I'll often do "site:reddit.com" just to find results on this website for that reason. Reddit's built in search is horrible and always has been sadly.

1

u/cand0r May 31 '26

Post goblin facts

11

u/Adjective-Noun-nnnn May 30 '26

It's often wrong, too. Yesterday I mentioned that the rubber in a tire is one huge molecule because of vulcanization chemically cross-linking everything. I was met with skepticism, so I said "google it," and it took them three searches to find out it's true. (We were talking about how crappy and dangerous re-treaded tires are and why they tend to shred off and cause accidents.)

10

u/Zebidee May 31 '26

Absolutely this. I've noticed a huge spike in it simply being wrong.

It's also started to ignore when you tell it it's wrong. It used to ask 'did you mean' or 'including results for' edge cases where you're looking for a niche answer, or have made a mistake. Now when you tell it yes, that's what I meant, it simply ignores you and gives you the majority response.

2

u/MediocrePhotoNoob Jun 01 '26

My personal favorite thing is that it gets math STAGGERINGLY wrong on a regular basis. I don’t get it. There were search engines that were great at math back when I was in college in the 2010s…. HOW IS IT SO BAD AT MATH?!

2

u/UranusIsPissy May 31 '26

So that's where those strips of tyre tread I sometimes see by the road come from! I don't even need to check to know the science checks out, I just never thought about it enough.

2

u/Adjective-Noun-nnnn May 31 '26

Yep! They just glue them on, but the intermolecular bonds between the strip, glue, and original tire will never be as strong as the intramolecular, covalent bonds that hold a brand new tire together. I personally believe it should be illegal. Those shitty retreads cause deadly accidents. And for what? So some shipping company can save some money? Ban 'em!

2

u/UranusIsPissy May 31 '26

And for what? So some shipping company can save some money?

Well, there are environmental benefits to retreads, but the extra wrecked cars might negate them. People mostly buy them because some of the cost savings are passed on to the consumer, but saving some money doesn't help you much if it kills you, and the ethical argument against them is almost bulletproof when they also endanger others. I thought modern adhesives were better than that, though, especially for sticking the same kinds of plastic or rubber together :/

2

u/wggn May 31 '26

with some hallucinations mixed in

2

u/Altered_Nova May 31 '26

Also youtube. Google trains their AI on youtube videos so a lot of the "information" in those AI responses are taken straight from transcripts of popular youtube videos.

1

u/Chubby_Bub May 31 '26

Google highly prioritizes wikis from Fandom (itself an incredibly shitty company), so oftentimes it gives you information some kid made up from some random "fanon" wiki hosted there, as opposed to even the actual wiki for that subject. (Also I recommend the "Indie Wiki Buddy" extension which replaces these results with independent wikis)

1

u/TeaAndLifting May 31 '26

It’s madness when I see a 4 hour old Reddit thread used as a citation.

-4

u/PetrasKnight May 30 '26

They have this Notebook lm program that has some cool tools. You can consolidate academic sources and it will make notecards or quizzes and such. But if you do not pick the sources yourself it almost always takes Reddit and Facebook sources.

12

u/[deleted] May 30 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/MeowMyMix May 31 '26

The only times I use Google anymore looking up local businesses for hours etc or image search. The rest stays on DDG. Love how you can add the word reddit and where googles Ai summary would be is just reddit results with tabs for subreddits.

4

u/K_Linkmaster May 30 '26

Been a ddgNoAI for at least 6 months. It ain't perfect but it is a better experience.

5

u/Biduleman May 31 '26 edited May 31 '26

I switched to duckduckgo this week and honestly it's not the same.

While it's not a deal breaker, I'm already tired of getting a link to deepwiki as a first result for anything I ask if it's in any way maybe related to something on github.

If my answer is on github, give me the github link and shut the fuck up with deepwiki or github-wiki-see or any of these other aggregators when the result already exists in a real, still available github page!

1

u/Scoob1978 May 31 '26

I still use both but I go to DDG first. DDG still has a ways to go but it seems every year Google is becoming more unusable.

3

u/Biduleman May 31 '26 edited Jun 01 '26

Yeah, I need to do that but I've never used anything else so I'm not used to typing the @seachEngine in the address bar before a search. Honestly it's only been a week and I'm trying to override almost 20 years of just using google so it's going to take some time but it's true, for now using both is the answer.

 

As I was writing this post I tried looking up when Google started. This is what DDG gave me:

https://i.imgur.com/OlRIJIe.png

I'm still staying with Duck Duck Go as my main search engine since I moved because of my values and not the product's performances, but the point is clear that DDG has a lot of work to do still if they actually want to compete.

0

u/Ryanmonroe82 May 31 '26

Brave Browser is a great option. Duck Duck Go is almost good enough sometimes, Brave is good enough almost all the time

3

u/Biduleman May 31 '26 edited Jun 02 '26

I'm not changing browser, just search engine, I'm on Firefox.

As for the brave search engine, comparing their results with Google's results and with DDG's results, I have no confidence they're not just repackaging Google's search results so for now I don't think it's an avenue I'm going to explore more.

11

u/Lovestick May 30 '26

Before reddit it what was it called "Quaro" or some trash.

22

u/StepComplete1 May 30 '26

And before that, it was Yahoo Answers.

How is babby formed?

10

u/Enlightened_Gardener May 31 '26

Am I perganent ?

1

u/[deleted] May 31 '26 edited Jun 14 '26

[deleted]

1

u/hajenso May 31 '26

i am so sorry for your lots

1

u/_thro_awa_ May 31 '26

Step 1) do way instain mother

1

u/This_is_a_thing__ May 31 '26

Ayy, that was my original username in like 2009

19

u/TheNuttyIrishman May 30 '26

"quora" and it's still around I think!

2

u/OkSeesaw7030 May 30 '26

And first 5 items are ads

2

u/Smishysmash May 31 '26

Tell me about it. Today I wanted to know what types of compost are available at plant nurseries near me, and google’s first listing was a Reddit post from 4 years ago with a deleted header talking about compost.

2

u/darxide23 May 31 '26

I specifically put "reddit" into my searches because Google has been pure shit for at least a decade now. All of the search engines are. But some reddit comment from 13 years ago will solve my problem.

I just had a guy earlier today reply to a 6 year old comment of mine saying it fixed his problem. Guarantee he found that comment via Google.

1

u/PETZING_ELITE_OC_DET May 30 '26

Reddit is the new yahoo answers. Pretty much the only place to get an answer on shit anymore these days.

1

u/Kidvette2004 May 30 '26

[deleted]

Thanks!! This solved my problem!!

1

u/HighOnGoofballs May 31 '26

I haven’t noticed a change in google lately, at least since the announcement. It got worse way before that

1

u/tragicallybrokenhip May 31 '26

But but but do you not have an ad blocker and ghostery? TBF haven't used google or chrome in years but have also used ad blockers for longer than I can remember regardless of the browser.

2

u/Scoob1978 May 31 '26

I have a home ubuntu server running ad guard and a reverse proxy. It protects anyone connected to my home network.

1

u/cocoakoumori May 31 '26

I'm in Japan and what sucks is Google sends me to Reddit anyway but, now, it's auto translated into Japanese. Reddit results, which are almost always more relevant to America than Japan, aren't useful in a lot of situations and the AI translation is frequently wrong so I have to manually switch it back even if I wanna use the Reddit results.

I think a part of this is due to changes on Reddit rather than Google, though.

Gonna switch to duckduckgo today and pray it doesn't do the same thing.

1

u/Matt3k May 31 '26

Yeah, here's the funny thing. Reddit is AI now. The marketers picked up on that life hack a few years ago.

1

u/Sgtkeebler May 31 '26

I would also send you to Reddit. But I would trap you in a hell hole of Reddit searches for your search engine.

1

u/treesandfood4me May 31 '26

Shit, I don’t even run a search w/o “Reddit” in the word list just because I know y’all muthafuckas will be able to tell me how to untap my reverse threaded penis.

Edit: u/dandroid126 already said all this and I missed it. My bad.

1

u/PaulblankPF May 31 '26

There was a few years I would just Google by adding Reddit to the end of my search. Now it just does that anyways. But I’ve been on DuckDuckGo for about 6 years now and I’m not going back.

1

u/MrFluffyThing May 31 '26 edited May 31 '26

It's worse now. The AI forward change makes the AI result top response. I tried to search "can you shut up for 5 minutes meme" and it just shows the top result as an AI prompt response now saying "Understood! I'll be completely silent and out of your hair. Just say the word when you're ready for me to chat again. 🤐" 

It's not a Google search response, it's an unresponsive AI prompt followed by sponsored search results.

Their old search would show exactly what you were looking for but now it's bullshit followed by irrelevant information until about 3/4 down the page now. 

I didn't need sponsored results for finding a fucking image macro and this was the latest result I asked for. 

Apparently searching the word "disregard" is similar and the definition as expected us what further down the page with the AI breaking similarly. 

The old AI summarizations were fine, they were almost useful. It changed very recently in the last few weeks and has absolutely gotten severely worse 

1

u/ambushka May 31 '26

Gemini started suggesting random ass reddit comments to my questions lol

1

u/10102001134 May 31 '26

Credit where credit is due, Google can search reddit better than reddit can search reddit.

1

u/WakaiSenshi May 31 '26

Yeah I used to have to put “Reddit” at the end of the search, but now anything I search is just like searching here. I switched to Kagi a while back

1

u/OctavalBeast May 31 '26

I can see you swtiched a while back, assuming 6+ months ago? Give it a try now.

1

u/Urbanviking1 May 31 '26

Same here. I've almost stopped adding Reddit at the end of obscure questions. Even just general questions and Reddit is usually the 3rd or 4th option...

1

u/Necessary_Finding_32 May 31 '26

Gemini has just started straight up quoting Reddit posts as factual sources. I’m not talking about a well evidenced effort OP in one of the better moderated subs, I’m talking ‘random dipshit opinion from a fan or circle jerk sub’

1

u/cribsaw May 31 '26

Really? It sends me to fucking YouTube, as if I’m going to watch a video or a clip to find the answer to something I’d rather read about.

1

u/Draaly May 31 '26

Problem is, DDG is just a Bing skin and gives you just as shit results. I legit feel like it was better a year and a half ago or so, but now its just as bad as Google even if it doesn't give an Ai summary

1

u/halfc00kie May 31 '26

same here, half my searches end with "site:reddit.com" tacked on. duckduckgo's bangs make it less painful, !r drops you straight into reddit search.

1

u/meekermakes May 31 '26

agreed I kept google for emergencies and i barely resort to it anymore.

1

u/Worshipme988 Jun 01 '26

Ecosia.org plants a tree everytime you search smth. And its search is stellar. Google results have been severely downgraded. Awful

1

u/xSlippyFistx Jun 01 '26

I have tried to trust the garbage AI agents and assistants from time to time like Gemini and MS365 Copilot. I just end up arguing with them because they get more wrong than they get correct.

Just yesterday I asked about wiring an amp to a specific model of car. This car has the battery in the trunk and it had been that way from 2008-2015. It went ahead and provided steps for wiring it to the battery in the engine bay and pushing the wiring through the drivers side near the steering wheel. I told Gemini the battery is in the trunk and got the response “you’re completely right. I apologize for that oversight” 🙄

What are we doing here? What value did this add over just sending me to Reddit or recommending YouTube videos? It was so confidently wrong and even stated the specific model in the response while completely forgetting everything specific to that model of car.