The last few paragraphs have me worried for the author's tech literacy lol. A couple lines are so bizarre that I can't tell what they actually think web browsers and search engines are: Good on...
The last few paragraphs have me worried for the author's tech literacy lol. A couple lines are so bizarre that I can't tell what they actually think web browsers and search engines are:
Perhaps the most optimal way to use a search engine, however, is by downloading it to your device, whether through a desktop or smartphone − just like you'd download Google Chrome or Firefox. Though it may sound counterintuitive, users can also change their default browser in Google Chrome.
To change the default browser on Google Chrome, click the three dots in the top right corner, then Settings. On the left-hand side of the settings menu, click Search Engine. Select Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo or Yandex as the default.
...
Though Google owns the Android operating system, users can still change the default browser. Open the Google Chrome app, click Settings then Search engine. Select Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo or Yandex as the default
Good on them for helping people switch from Google, though.
Edit: A friend said they think it reads like an LLM. I can totally see that, but maybe from an LLM of two to three years ago. I honestly think this feels too obvious for the kind of mistakes they make nowadays. Maybe USA Today is paying for/running a really bad one lol?
It's not just that the tech vocabularly is wrong, it's just not well written Sometimes it reads like a high schooler wrote it, other times it reads like it was written by someone for whom English...
It's not just that the tech vocabularly is wrong, it's just not well written
As AI chatbots are refined and platforms like Google continue to integrate the technology, some people are looking for ways to distance themselves from the technology.
Sometimes it reads like a high schooler wrote it, other times it reads like it was written by someone for whom English is a second language. I feel like either the editor rubber stamped it or there's no real editing for the online only posts.
Doesn't look LLM written to me though, I agree the current models wouldn't make some of the mistakes in the article.
I'd guess they are confused by the DuckDuckGo Browser or the DDG browser extensions, since they also mention "DuckDuckGo [...] has experienced an increase in downloads". That's maybe what they...
I'd guess they are confused by the DuckDuckGo Browser or the DDG browser extensions, since they also mention "DuckDuckGo [...] has experienced an increase in downloads".
Thank you for saying this. I thought I was just not understanding and kept reading it over and over again. Was this written with AI? Does USA Today have copy editors anymore? I shared this article...
Thank you for saying this. I thought I was just not understanding and kept reading it over and over again. Was this written with AI? Does USA Today have copy editors anymore? I shared this article with other people before finishing it and now I'm wondering how that reflects on me lol.
They get the worst of both worlds - they shove AI at people who don't want it (intrusively in search) turning people off to the engine entirely; they also support non-augmented search by adding...
They get the worst of both worlds - they shove AI at people who don't want it (intrusively in search) turning people off to the engine entirely; they also support non-augmented search by adding &udm=14 to your default search query yet without getting any of the opt-out positive buzz (from the kinds of users already complacent with gradual phase-out via config flags in products like Chrome) by making it more prominent to people already looking to leave anyway. Shooting themselves in the foot and the ass simultaneously.
I'll never understand why google of all the giants fell off, man. People keep talking about a culture problem but it'll never change until google themselves admit they have a culture problem.
Google used to only/mostly hire technical staff out of ivy league graduate programs. Those are the folks who are in charge now. There are always going to be strange ideas and groupthink in that...
Google used to only/mostly hire technical staff out of ivy league graduate programs. Those are the folks who are in charge now.
There are always going to be strange ideas and groupthink in that kind of monoculture.
My main gripe with Google is their changes have a disproportionate impact to finding and presenting a lot of information on the web as a whole. People love to joke about winding stories on recipe...
My main gripe with Google is their changes have a disproportionate impact to finding and presenting a lot of information on the web as a whole.
People love to joke about winding stories on recipe blogs and rambling YouTube videos to pad the time. The algorithms that surface these things on Google or YouTube search results are something Google have full control over and can tune anytime they please.
Someone, somewhere in this company has decided that making people chant your "like and subscribe", useless red circles and shocked facial expressions on thumbnails are the intended experience for YouTube.
It started when they merged with DoubleClick. They went from being an engineering-focused company to an advertising company, and the changes in management over the years reflect that. (There was...
It started when they merged with DoubleClick. They went from being an engineering-focused company to an advertising company, and the changes in management over the years reflect that. (There was even some supposed internal and investor discontent about Waymo early on, because it was a costly endeavor outside of advertising.)
Even search result quality can likely be traced back to them optimizing an engagement loop: the more shitty sites you visit that have ads from their monopolistic network, the more ad impressions happen. Less-good sites with AdSense ads (content farm stuff) thus gets ranked higher than information-heavy sites you actually want, because you exit the loop if you land on one of those.
I really liked the couple of weeks DuckDuckGo didn't have AI while Google did. Then they had it but would ask if you wanted to use it. Now they've gotten as bad as Google with default settings....
I really liked the couple of weeks DuckDuckGo didn't have AI while Google did. Then they had it but would ask if you wanted to use it.
Now they've gotten as bad as Google with default settings. The only upside is you can (for now) easily turn it off or set it to 'on demand'. Ignoring my bias against AI, the 'on demand' option always felt like the best default. There if you want it, not forced on you. I definitely had used it once or twice when I wasn't finding a clean answer early on, and a lot of the reason Google was losing users was the lack of consent, which made it feel pleasantly appealing in comparison.
That's actually kind of fun. Do they have the ability to, idk, "?" if you want to have the question mark without the AI? I'm sure at a certain point you'd just either prefer it off or on, but now...
That's actually kind of fun. Do they have the ability to, idk, "?" if you want to have the question mark without the AI? I'm sure at a certain point you'd just either prefer it off or on, but now I'm curious. 👀
The question mark needs to be at the end of the query (I tried it in the middle and it won't work that way) In the settings you can also just turn this off altogether
The question mark needs to be at the end of the query (I tried it in the middle and it won't work that way)
In the settings you can also just turn this off altogether
I switched to DDG just yesterday after becoming fed up with hallucinated or useless Google results. Was also a bit strange that there was AI on it but yeah, at least it was incredibly easy to...
I switched to DDG just yesterday after becoming fed up with hallucinated or useless Google results. Was also a bit strange that there was AI on it but yeah, at least it was incredibly easy to switch it off - not a setting hidden somewhere, not some weirdness about adjusting the browser's settings, etc.
Having an on/off button is deserving of compliments. The bar is so low nowadays..
DuckDuckGo, a search engine that promotes privacy-protected searching, has experienced an increase in downloads since Google's announcement on May 19.
Germany-based search engine Ecosia has also experienced increased use. Christian Kroll, CEO and founder of Ecosia, told USA TODAY in an email that over the past two weeks, Ecosia searches have grown by nearly 40%, while installs have more than doubled.
If the impacts weren't so large and negative it would be purely interesting to see how the big platforms can continue to abuse their users for decades, degrade their quality of service to nearly...
If the impacts weren't so large and negative it would be purely interesting to see how the big platforms can continue to abuse their users for decades, degrade their quality of service to nearly nothing and just not lose almost any users.
Most of it is probably the ubiquitous data harvesting enabling any changes to be thoroughly tuned. And also apathy and general tech illiteracy of course.
Perhaps the most optimal way to use a search engine, however, is by downloading it to your device
What? I know there was a distributed search engine program a few years back whose name I unfortunately cannot recall right now. I doubt the article is talking about that, though. Even if something like DuckDuckGo or Kagi has its branded browser why I would I want to actually use that when simply trying new search engines?
Edit: It was Yacy(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YaCy) I don't know the current state though and latest release was almost two yeas ago. The challenge for these types of projects is the dreaded network effect.
The last few paragraphs have me worried for the author's tech literacy lol. A couple lines are so bizarre that I can't tell what they actually think web browsers and search engines are:
Good on them for helping people switch from Google, though.
Edit: A friend said they think it reads like an LLM. I can totally see that, but maybe from an LLM of two to three years ago. I honestly think this feels too obvious for the kind of mistakes they make nowadays. Maybe USA Today is paying for/running a really bad one lol?
It's not just that the tech vocabularly is wrong, it's just not well written
Sometimes it reads like a high schooler wrote it, other times it reads like it was written by someone for whom English is a second language. I feel like either the editor rubber stamped it or there's no real editing for the online only posts.
Doesn't look LLM written to me though, I agree the current models wouldn't make some of the mistakes in the article.
They're using the terms "search engine" and "browser" interchangeably is the problem.
I'd guess they are confused by the DuckDuckGo Browser or the DDG browser extensions, since they also mention "DuckDuckGo [...] has experienced an increase in downloads".
That's maybe what they think of when they say "download a search engine".
Thank you for saying this. I thought I was just not understanding and kept reading it over and over again. Was this written with AI? Does USA Today have copy editors anymore? I shared this article with other people before finishing it and now I'm wondering how that reflects on me lol.
They get the worst of both worlds - they shove AI at people who don't want it (intrusively in search) turning people off to the engine entirely; they also support non-augmented search by adding &udm=14 to your default search query yet without getting any of the opt-out positive buzz (from the kinds of users already complacent with gradual phase-out via config flags in products like Chrome) by making it more prominent to people already looking to leave anyway. Shooting themselves in the foot and the ass simultaneously.
I'll never understand why google of all the giants fell off, man. People keep talking about a culture problem but it'll never change until google themselves admit they have a culture problem.
Google used to only/mostly hire technical staff out of ivy league graduate programs. Those are the folks who are in charge now.
There are always going to be strange ideas and groupthink in that kind of monoculture.
My main gripe with Google is their changes have a disproportionate impact to finding and presenting a lot of information on the web as a whole.
People love to joke about winding stories on recipe blogs and rambling YouTube videos to pad the time. The algorithms that surface these things on Google or YouTube search results are something Google have full control over and can tune anytime they please.
Someone, somewhere in this company has decided that making people chant your "like and subscribe", useless red circles and shocked facial expressions on thumbnails are the intended experience for YouTube.
It started when they merged with DoubleClick. They went from being an engineering-focused company to an advertising company, and the changes in management over the years reflect that. (There was even some supposed internal and investor discontent about Waymo early on, because it was a costly endeavor outside of advertising.)
Even search result quality can likely be traced back to them optimizing an engagement loop: the more shitty sites you visit that have ads from their monopolistic network, the more ad impressions happen. Less-good sites with AdSense ads (content farm stuff) thus gets ranked higher than information-heavy sites you actually want, because you exit the loop if you land on one of those.
We have Moonshot labs and Kombucha on tap! Of course our staff love it here!
I really liked the couple of weeks DuckDuckGo didn't have AI while Google did. Then they had it but would ask if you wanted to use it.
Now they've gotten as bad as Google with default settings. The only upside is you can (for now) easily turn it off or set it to 'on demand'. Ignoring my bias against AI, the 'on demand' option always felt like the best default. There if you want it, not forced on you. I definitely had used it once or twice when I wasn't finding a clean answer early on, and a lot of the reason Google was losing users was the lack of consent, which made it feel pleasantly appealing in comparison.
Kagi’s way of doing it is also sane to me. You can add a “?” at the end of your query and that activates the AI. Else, it’s just a normal search
That's actually kind of fun. Do they have the ability to, idk, "?" if you want to have the question mark without the AI? I'm sure at a certain point you'd just either prefer it off or on, but now I'm curious. 👀
The question mark needs to be at the end of the query (I tried it in the middle and it won't work that way)
In the settings you can also just turn this off altogether
I switched to DDG just yesterday after becoming fed up with hallucinated or useless Google results. Was also a bit strange that there was AI on it but yeah, at least it was incredibly easy to switch it off - not a setting hidden somewhere, not some weirdness about adjusting the browser's settings, etc.
Having an on/off button is deserving of compliments. The bar is so low nowadays..
DuckDuckGo has a dedicated No AI search:
https://noai.DuckDuckGo.com
I’ve set it as the default search engine on all of my devices & browsers.
If the impacts weren't so large and negative it would be purely interesting to see how the big platforms can continue to abuse their users for decades, degrade their quality of service to nearly nothing and just not lose almost any users.
Most of it is probably the ubiquitous data harvesting enabling any changes to be thoroughly tuned. And also apathy and general tech illiteracy of course.
What? I know there was a distributed search engine program a few years back whose name I unfortunately cannot recall right now. I doubt the article is talking about that, though. Even if something like DuckDuckGo or Kagi has its branded browser why I would I want to actually use that when simply trying new search engines?
Edit: It was Yacy(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YaCy) I don't know the current state though and latest release was almost two yeas ago. The challenge for these types of projects is the dreaded network effect.
SearxNG?
Searxng is a meta search engine combining other search engine results. I guess it is sort of distributed in that sense but also very different.