Google's new AI-powered 'Search Generative Experience' algorithms recommend scam sites that redirect visitors to unwanted Chrome extensions, fake iPhone giveaways, browser spam subscriptions, and tech support scams.

(In the case that someone in Lemmy still use Google)

  • stevedidwhat_infosec@infosec.pub
    951·
    9 months ago

    Here the funny part, google knew this shit would happen. How you ask? Well, see google has had this problem for a long time.

    When google first came out, there was all sorts of techniques you could use to boost your PageRank. Google had to tweak and tweak and tweak to fix it so that nazi sites would not come up when you looked up Jewish holocaust memorial museums for example.

    Seems they’ve learned nothing. And yet they’re still one of the biggest tech companies in the world.

    Scary. Let’s add AI to the mix now.

    • Zerush@lemmy.mlOP
      141·
      9 months ago

      At least they haven’t used ChaosGPT for this.

      Lord and master, hear my call! I have need of Thee! from the spirits that I called Sir, deliver me!

      Goethe - The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

    • PoorPocketsMcNewHold@lemmy.ml
      481·
      9 months ago

      If you believe Google is the most reliable, you can still use it in a private way via :

      • Startpage

      Startpage is a private search engine known for serving Google and Bing search results. One of Startpage’s unique features is the Anonymous View, which puts forth efforts to standardize user activity to make it more difficult to be uniquely identified. The feature can be useful for hiding some network and browser properties.

      https://www.startpage.com/

      SearXNG is an open-source, self-hostable, metasearch engine, aggregating the results of other search engines while not storing any information itself.

      There’s plenty of public instances too https://searx.space/

      Get Google search results, but without any ads, JavaScript, AMP links, cookies, or IP address tracking. Easily deployable in one click as a Docker app, and customizable with a single config file.

      Couple of public instances too. Basically SearxNG with ONLY google as a source. https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search#public-instances

        • squeakycat@lemmy.ml
          32·
          9 months ago

          That’s fair. Like the sibling comment says, it’s worth it for me. But not everyone has the ability to pay.

          • RGB3x3@lemmy.worldEnglish
            16·
            9 months ago

            Yeah, but $10 a month is a lot. And the $5 plan for only 300 searches a month goes by really fast if you have to do any kind of research for anything. Even for trying to figure out what brand of something to buy, you blow through those searches super quick.

                • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
                  3·
                  9 months ago

                  Google’s ad search revenue amounted to 175 billion

                  That includes way more than search:

                  That “search and other” figure includes revenue generated on Google’s search properties, along with ads on other Google-owned properties like Gmail, Maps and the Google Play app store.

                  I couldn’t find a reliable source for a breakdown, so I’ll use Microsoft Bing statistics instead:

                  • $12.2B ad revenue in 2023
                  • ~1.3 billion unique visitors globally as of March 2023
                  • $9.66 Bing revenue per user

                  That last number is really close to my $1/month figure.

                  So something around $1/month range seems like a fair replacement for ad revenue for a search engine.

              • stewie3128@lemmy.ml
                12·
                9 months ago

                They’ve said that it costs them 1.5 cents to answer a search query, so that dollar a month wouldn’t go very far. I probably incidentally run 40-50 searches a day between my devices… $10 is a value that works for me.

                I’ve been using Kagi as my default since June, and don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.

                • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
                  21·
                  9 months ago

                  That sounds unlikely… But they’re a small search provider with a small customer base, so costs will be high maintaining all the infrastructure needed.

                  As I linked elsewhere, Bing makes ~$10 per user per year. That’s really close to my $1/month figure. And that’s revenue, which doesn’t count advertiser acquisition costs and whatnot.

                  I’m unwilling to pay $5/month for limited searches, but I’m willing to pay for search if it’s reasonable.

          • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
            104·
            9 months ago

            That doesn’t mean the price has to be the same as a fucking Netflix subscription.

            Which service uses more computation? Streaming HQ video to millions of people, or running a search engine. Keep in mind, search engines have existed since basically before the internet in some form or another…

            • stewie3128@lemmy.ml
              32·
              9 months ago

              Well, it costs Kagi about 1.5 cents to answer a search query. Consider how many searches you use in a month to determine how much they’re making off you at $10/mo.

              I’m lucky enough to be in a position to be able to pay for products that I use, instead of relying on freemium, or ad-supported, or data-mined, or pirated products. That hasn’t always been the case for me, so I don’t judge anyone for making a different choice.

              • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
                13·
                9 months ago

                If they’re taking in less than 1000 searches of money for 3000 searches, the numbers still aren’t adding up. Someone is misinformed or the product still.

    • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      7·
      9 months ago

      DDG queries can’t really be written the same way you’d write one in Google if you’re after effective results. It’ll take some time to get used to it, tbh I was using DDG alongside Google until I fully switched.

      • Pussista@sh.itjust.works
        12·
        9 months ago

        I keep reading that Google’s search results are supposedly much better than DDG’s when my experience is the exact opposite. I don’t even live in an English speaking country and the results I get are a vast improvement over Google’s. It has been this way for me since at least last year, but in my experience DDG had caught up to Google in 2022 already. It could also be that Google has just deteriorated a lot in the last two years (which it definitely has, judging by all the bad publicity they’ve been getting for it), so I’d urge you to give DDG/Brave Search/Bing/Kagi/SearxNG another chance.

        I’d also recommend setting an alternative of your choice as the default everywhere and to use it exclusively for like a week before making up your mind about that specific product!

      • sanpo
        4·
        9 months ago

        Do you mean grammar-wise, or special operators?

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
            1·
            9 months ago

            I’ve never used questions to search, I use keywords, even with Google. So if I want info on the Russia-Ukraine war, I’ll search “Russia-Ukraine War”. If I want casualty numbers, I’ll add “casualties” there, probably at the start if I want to emphasize it. Searching “how many people have died in the ukraine war” has never been something I do.

            That said, natural language search may be more useful with AI tools though, but for regular search, I’ve always used keyword-dense queries, roughly ordered by priority in the query (important terms first).

        • LostWon@lemmy.ca
          61·
          9 months ago

          They probably mean grammar, since most Google operators do work. If there’s a specific difference in search syntax (other than bangs) though, I’d love to know what I’ve been missing.

      • PunkiBas@lemmy.world
        2·
        9 months ago

        Whoa! You weren’t kidding about that list of search engines. What’s with the Germans and search engines? They sure do have a lot.

        • Zerush@lemmy.mlOP
          4·
          9 months ago

          The author of th Thread is German, he icluded because of this also searches in German media sites or dictionaries. But if you want a German search engine, you can use MetaGer, not bad at all. Good privacy but freemium, in the free version there are ads, (context, anonymous) and limited on 2 search engines.

          • PunkiBas@lemmy.world
            2·
            9 months ago

            Hah! I in fact have been using metager for a couple of months now as my defult search engine, since I saw it recommended in Lemmy those 2 months ago. Works great. Tried kagi before but I just don’t search that much and paying per search makes much more sense to me.

  • darkphotonstudio@beehaw.org
    441·
    9 months ago

    I remember when Google was the cool new kid on the block. How far they’ve fallen. But that’s what unrestrained, unregulated capitalism gets you. It’s all a race to the bottom.

    • Robaque@feddit.it
      1423·
      9 months ago

      Can we please stop pretending “regulation” is all that effective. It’s been tried, and has resulted in corrupt bureaucracy or given way to neoliberalism (and corporate bureaucracy).

      What we need is a radically different system where the power truly is in the hands of the people, and not just nominally like in representative democracy (and which is completely lacking anyways in most workplaces). And what this requires is the construction of fundamentally different modes of production and human interrelation that will not resemble what we’ve got now, neither economically nor politically nor socially. Regulating capitalism won’t get us there.

      • The Cuuuuube@beehaw.orgEnglish
        24·
        9 months ago

        There’s an issue at play here that I think we’re not confronting enough. America has been on a steady march of deregulating in the name of corporate greed. Some of the most functional countries in the world are also the ones with the strongest regulatory bodies (granted they’re also largely petrochemical profiteers, I do have criticisms even of countries that I think are doing better than the US) because there’s a presumption built into the system that if left unchecked, the forces of greed will violate the liberties of the populace. Its not a coincidence that the only countries that faced major Y2K bug issues were the UK and the US. Germany, Nordic countries, and Benelux countries all ALSO faced this bug, but in those countries the consequences for fucking up banking data was fines. In the US and UK, the consequences were someone might sue in civil court. Much less scary for banking institutions so they continuously acted like the problem was someone else’s problem until the last minute.

        My point is this: regulations work. We have case studies in other countries that they work. We don’t implement them not because they don’t work but because they require long view systems change and the political system we live in doesn’t encourage thinking long term. Political funding efforts encourage thinking of policy in 2-6 year terms instead of the actual 30 year time frames it requires to plan them. Its much easier to pull a quick grift with political power weakening the overall system than it is to FIX the system. It incentivizes corruption. THAT is the issue that needs addressing and one we should really be trying to assess what the Benelux countries are doing so well

        • Black_Beard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          10·
          9 months ago

          Capitalism with its unrelenting drive to maximum profits at all costs will always eventually erode regulations, or capture the regulatory bodies. We had more regulations, more unions, and higher taxes before. They were put in place in response to the excesses of capitalism in the early 1900s, and capitalists eventually found ways to undo a lot of them. We need different systems with different incentives, or keep repeating this cycle.

        • Robaque@feddit.it
          2·
          9 months ago

          The deregulation march you’re talking about is neoliberalism, and it hasn’t just affected USA. And in a sense neoliberalism is capitalism’s response to regulation.

          It’s not that regulation doesn’t work per se, it’s that the (political) hierarchy through which it functions is susceptible to being taken advantage of, and inevitably it will be (*has been) taken advantage of by the capitalist class to protect their economic hierarchy.

          For democracy to truly represent the people it’d need to be federated from the ground up through free association. Large scale organisation and cooperation would be ephemeral, existing when/if the need arises and dissolving as soon as projects are concluded (or cancelled). But within the rigidity of the current system(s), where power is consolidated at the ‘top’ through processes we’re lead to believe are necessary for ‘order’ (when their real purpose is of course control), horizontal forms of social organisation seem impossible (I like how Anark calls this - “hierarchical realism”).

  • FriendBesto@lemmy.ml
    332·
    9 months ago

    Google: “Hey, do not be evil.”

    Google years later: "Can I has all the profits and personal data?”

    Google after that: " I am the Lizard Queen!"

  • ebits21@lemmy.caEnglish
    151·
    9 months ago

    I…. Don’t really get why they think this is better. Google search was good…. Other companies can copy AI technology anyway. AI is really just predicting words and wasn’t designed for search, but their old algorithm was.

    Whyyyyyy

    • The Cuuuuube@beehaw.orgEnglish
      7·
      9 months ago

      Google hasn’t understood the internet for a long time. They created an excellent search algorithm by treating the internet as a single information system that warranted analysis and indexing for convenient traversal.

      These days that’s not… Something they’re interested in anymore. The goal is to collect user data for targeting advertising and resale. Their core product is still the search bar, sure, but that’s just a hook to reel you in. They’ll attach whatever buzzword to it it takes to keep it in the zeitgeist. “Ai” is hot right now so that’s the buzzword.

      I don’t get the impression technical competency is something Google values anymore…

      • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        0·
        9 months ago

        There’s been some former Google employees with stories about being told by the ad team to scrap mostly completed projects that increased search functionality because in testing it negatively impacted impressions on the “sponsored” search results.

        That really says all you need to know.

        Beyond that, Google is notorious for having terrible metrics for promotions. It highly incentivises creating new projects and disincentivises maintaining or improving existing systems.

    • ScreaminOctopus@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      5·
      9 months ago

      My theory is that Google wants to move towards vector symbolic representations for pages in search rather than page caching. It would make index storage and retrival orders of magnitude cheaper for them if they can design a scheme that works well.

  • youmaynotknow@lemmy.ml
    22·
    9 months ago

    Hell’s attorneys are seriously lacking. I’ve been waiting for them to sue Google for DMCA violations 🤣.

  • big_slap@lemmy.world
    12·
    9 months ago

    I have it on and use it just to see how terrible it is tbh, I get a laugh at how inaccurate it is every time 😂