Tuesday, February 27, 2024

On Google's untrustworthiness

Lots of folks are posting about the Google AI fiasco, and how it shows that you can't trust Google's search results. 

Um, we've known this for over a decade.  Their political ideology has been on display, right out in the open for a very long time.

9 comments:

juvat said...

Interesting, I always suspected that about Google. In your previous article you recommended Bing, is that still your position? Additionally, how do you feel about DuckDuckGo?
juvat

Beans said...

It's why I switched to Bing during the 2008 elections as everything was negative-Palin and pro-Obama on Google. Found much more evenly balanced results.

It's also been a thing on Google's webpage with their illustration of the day, since at least 2008 being anti-American and anti-conservative.

MacD said...

Yandex gives results that are very different from Google, Bing, DdG, etc.

Borepatch said...

DuckDuckGo is more balanced, but often doesn't give great results.

Yandex is good, but it's Russian. Your Mileage May Vary.

I find that mostly I use Bing and it's reliable.

Old NFO said...

Concur with Bing or DuckDuckGo

HMS Defiant said...

It's why I still pick up last years Almanac for a buck. When I want to know a fact it's nice to believe that what I'm reading is the real answer.

chris said...

They got rid of "Don't be evil" for a reason. Thinking of switching to DuckDuckGo (but they have shown themselves willing to compromise) or Bing (but that's a Microsoft product). Still trying to figure this out but their AI may be the final straw.

Richard said...

Duck Duck Go explicitly slants news about the Ukraine war. Perhaps other stuff as well but the CEO said they were going to do that about the war news.

Jerry said...

The thing is Google is no longer the only game in town and competitors are appearing regularly. I mostly use StartPage but DuckDuckGo works as well as do a half dozen other search engines. The point is that if you spread your searches between multiple search engines, one does not have enough of your data worth selling.

What I would like to see is a botnet that generates phony search data and fills the largely secret personal data market with gibberish. Your data is still in there but it's under a manure pile of gibberish.