do you feel in last year to now that google sloppified their search engine?

But how do you manage to get ads? Because I don't get any, is there a setting I need to check? Maybe a subscription to a service? :rolleyes: 😁
 
This really feels political.

I mean, most of the time, it's really a matter of actually paying attention to the answer you get. As far as I can tell, Google works fine for providing step-by-step, technical answers that are frankly the correct answer to the query.

Google is a robot, in case anyone forgot.

You play stupid games, you win stupid prizes.

Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.

I just frankly prefer to use Google as my go-to search engine. It would take a lot of harassment (like for a subscription service) AND bad search results for me to even consider alternatives. If Google can actually provide me with a workable, useful answer, I don't wanna bother with DuckDuckGo. It's an extra thing that makes the search more time-consuming. The stuff that Google puts up along the way - it doesn't bother me enough to want to switch. I might get a somewhat different hit with DDG, but why bother with DDG when Google does a perfectly adequate job as far as I can tell?
 
gergeskirolos59 said:
well google introduced AI search from a while and google search is not the same

does anyone feel the same?
Click to expand...
It has its uses but the problem is how it is developed and utilized.

You cannot just throw AI at everything blindly. That is where these large corporations are stumbling over these days. The technology is never a cookie cutter solution.

So I propose this question then: why doesn’t the FreeBSD community and broader BSD community develop its own artificial intelligence (AI) based technologies?

It is better it be developed within the community then daily feeding our data to a third party LLM. But then the question becomes is that even feasible? Is it practical? Pragmatically useful?

The first place I would start is at our handbook (the search bar): https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/
 
rcbsdpge said:
It has its uses but the problem is how it is developed and utilized.

You cannot just throw AI at everything blindly. That is where these large corporations are stumbling over these days. The technology is never a cookie cutter solution.

So I propose this question then: why doesn’t the FreeBSD community and broader BSD community develop its own artificial intelligence (AI) based technologies?

It is better it be developed within the community then daily feeding our data to a third party LLM. But then the question becomes is that even feasible? Is it practical? Pragmatically useful?

The first place I would start is at our handbook (the search bar): https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/
Click to expand...
Didn't NapoleonWils0n create something like that a little while back?
 
Really seems like startpage.com is leeching off Google anyway - like just about everyone who claims to be an "Alternative seach engine". Esp. that there's really no good way to conincingly and definitively show that they're NOT leeching off Google...

And with that in mind, why not skip the leeching middleman and go straight to Google?
🤔
😩
 
astyle said:
Didn't NapoleonWils0n create something like that a little while back?
Click to expand...

good memory mate

i did use notebooklm about a year and half ago
to search the Freebsd Handbook, Forum, Youtube and vermaden's site
you can also set it to exclude Google results so you only get results from those sources

you can now use a notebook as a source for a gemini chat
which means you use the chat to query the notebook

NapoleonWils0n

Post in thread 'Google Gemini gem search the Freebsd Handbook, Forum, Youtube and Vermaden's site'

You can export the results as a google docs as well

1 - click the share button under the results, and select "Export to Docs"

20250406_19h02m59s_grim.png


2 - then click the "Open Docs" button in the bottom left of the window

20250406_19h03m12s_grim.png


3 - that opens the google doc with the results in a new tab

20250406_19h03m20s_grim.png


For brownie points you can now use the Google Docs as a source with NotebookLM as well
  • Thanks
  • Like


20261016_12h54m29s_grim.png
 
NapoleonWils0n said:
you can now use a notebook as a source for a gemini chat
which means you use the chat to query the notebook
Click to expand...
Now that actually looks useful.

It takes time to shame someone into RTFMing. Now all we have to do is ask Gemini the robot to explain, and the robot is not gonna run out of patience explaining the same thing over and over again.
😏
 
NGL, Google has sucked for at least the last decade. It was kind of OK for a while just because it was able to scan more of the internet and returned results fairly quickly, but it's never been the best in terms of actually delivering predictable results.
 
A colleague of mine helps develop Nemotron over at NVIDIA. It is marketed as open source. Why not fork one of those off the shelf open source LLM’s for our own search engine?

I have the Plus version of Google Gemini. It is definitely a pain to navigate on GUI. Most of the time I go directly to Gemini instead of Google as my Google search engine these days
 
I think that at this point, there could be an Open Source chatbot that you can use as a drop-in replacement for Gemini.

hedwards said:
NGL, Google has sucked for at least the last decade. It was kind of OK for a while just because it was able to scan more of the internet and returned results fairly quickly, but it's never been the best in terms of actually delivering predictable results.
Click to expand...
Search for information is never predictable.
 
I de-Googled over a decade ago. DuckDuckGo may not be the best but atleast I’m not supporting Google.

Google was excellent when it first came out. I was a proud user. I was in heaven when I got a Gmail beta invite! I used that email address for such a long time until I realized that Google slowly morphed into an absolutely evil company.

Although I don’t use Google I still see it up on peoples screens and it is absolutely insane that 3/4 of the screen are ads. YouTube is similar which unfortunately has a monopoly. Unless you get extremely specific it is very difficult to find what you want via the search which of course is powered by AI now.

In terms of results I am confident all search has got worse over the years for many reasons with AI being the main culprit.
 
NinjaBSD said:
Although I don’t use Google I still see it up on peoples screens and it is absolutely insane that 3/4 of the screen are ads. YouTube is similar which unfortunately has a monopoly. Unless you get extremely specific it is very difficult to find what you want via the search which of course is powered by AI now.

In terms of results I am confident all search has got worse over the years for many reasons with AI being the main culprit.
Click to expand...

You need to tell these people to install a good adblocker or two. Might require switching from Chrome to Firefox, though.
 
astyle said:
I think that at this point, there could be an Open Source chatbot that you can use as a drop-in replacement for Gemini.


Search for information is never predictable.
Click to expand...
There are degrees. Google doesn't even bother to try to give you what you ask for because it would rather direct you to a bunch of sites where it makes more money on ads.
 
hedwards said:
There are degrees. Google doesn't even bother to try to give you what you ask for because it would rather direct you to a bunch of sites where it makes more money on ads.
Click to expand...
yeah, says someone who doesn't want to actually bother with scrolling down even a bit to get past the ad-sprinkled stuff.

If you really wanted the information, you'd bother to put in the effort to scroll past.

Google counts on people being too lazy to even scroll a little - and it's amazing how correct that assessment is most of the time. The results are there and available, but people are lazier than in the past.
😏

Edit: One of my profile posts (from Feb. 13, 2025) sums it up pretty good, and basically says, "Why blame others for hiding info when you hide info from yourself?".
 
The sole purpose of any profit making company is to make money. You can't blame Google for doing things to make money even if it's inconvenient for you. If they didn't strive to that goal, investors would run away. For them, it works.
 
astyle said:
yeah, says someone who doesn't want to actually bother with scrolling down even a bit to get past the ad-sprinkled stuff.

If you really wanted the information, you'd bother to put in the effort to scroll past.

Google counts on people being too lazy to even scroll a little - and it's amazing how correct that assessment is most of the time. The results are there and available, but people are lazier than in the past.
😏

Edit: One of my profile posts (from Feb. 13, 2025) sums it up pretty good, and basically says, "Why blame others for hiding info when you hide info from yourself?".
Click to expand...
I'm moderately OK with scrolling. But, it's scrolling for multiple pages of stuff that Google thought was more important to show you than the things that better match what you asked for. And not even finding real search results until multiple pages in.

I really need to look into one of those newer community led search engines, having one or two groups scanning everything doesn't really work as well as it should, indexing should really be done by the sites themselves with them getting a slice of the revenue from search.
 
hedwards said:
I'm moderately OK with scrolling. But, it's scrolling for multiple pages of stuff that Google thought was more important to show you than the things that better match what you asked for. And not even finding real search results until multiple pages in.

I really need to look into one of those newer community led search engines, having one or two groups scanning everything doesn't really work as well as it should, indexing should really be done by the sites themselves with them getting a slice of the revenue from search.
Click to expand...
It's not multiple pages, just top 5 or so results, maybe 10 max.... And you might want to get used to that, Amazon does that, too, everybody does that.

As for 'newer search engines that are community-led' - come on, every last one of them is leeching off Google (and other "Big Tech" like Bing and Apple Search) anyway. With hordes of leeches like that, the big guys do need to do something to make searching for info even sustainable. Otherwise, it will be like "Public libraries charging an entry/membership/service fee", which was actually not unheard of in Europe, some places actually did that. You pay a fee for public transportation, so why not a fee for searching for publicly available information? Somebody has to maintain all that metal that supports the public information infrastructure, just like somebody has to maintain roads.
 
astyle said:
It's not multiple pages, just top 5 or so results, maybe 10 max.... And you might want to get used to that, Amazon does that, too, everybody does that.

As for 'newer search engines that are community-led' - come on, every last one of them is leeching off Google (and other "Big Tech" like Bing and Apple Search) anyway. With hordes of leeches like that, the big guys do need to do something to make searching for info even sustainable. Otherwise, it will be like "Public libraries charging an entry/membership/service fee", which was actually not unheard of in Europe, some places actually did that. You pay a fee for public transportation, so why not a fee for searching for publicly available information? Somebody has to maintain all that metal that supports the public information infrastructure, just like somebody has to maintain roads.
Click to expand...
Perhaps for you, but most of the time if I've really needed something useful it started at page 2 at the quickest, and frequently is on page 3. Hence why I don't use it anymore, I got sick of that and just switched to basically everything else as Google is one of the worst options now with all the SEO and ad farming nonsense.
 
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