Yesterday I tried to google "can the Halifax Wanderers still make the CPL playoffs?"
So obviously what appears right at the top is the AI summary, which told me "they've already secured their #4 position and made the playoffs". I knew this wasn't true, and I guess I could have just scrolled down a bit further and found my answer but now I was curious.
So I said "that's not true, they're still #5, what I want to know is _could they still make the playoffs_"
It says they've got an upcoming game against Ottawa, and if they win their chances are good. That game has already taken place, so I correct it again and finally I get a reasonable answer.
My question is: what's the point of the AI in the search engine if it itself isn't going to use the search engine first before answering? Like, I can't wrap my head around that. The answer is on the same page as its hallucination. It could have done a cursory look around before first hallucinating something completely false, and when corrected the first time giving me outdated information. It's meant to be A SEARCH ENGINE!
The AI answer dominates the page, and is usually wrong, so it's just a waste of the most valuable space on the page.
The ads have proliferated, and rarely have what I need.
Video search results also take up a lot of the page, and are almost never what I want if I haven't clicked over to the Video tab. Again, just a big waste of space.
Speaking of the Video tab its accuracy/relevancy has gotten worse too.
The organic results have deteriorated, and are still competitive, but are no longer clearly and consistently better than Duckduckgo.
So it's duckduckgo as the default for me on all devices now. If I don't find what I want, which is maybe 30% of the time, I switch over to G just by adding !g to the query. G might have what I need in about half of those cases.
You can see why a lot of people just ask an LLM to do the web searching for them.
Across the board, this is all quite bad compared to web search from 10+ years ago.
If there's a single thing which has really pushed me away from Google, it's simply google.com devoting so much of the page to things that aren't organic web search.
I was taking with a family member about fentanyl zombies. They had never seen the lean/bend. So I pull up Google and click video which is YouTube results… ALL AI. All of it. All a couple months old, all filler, faked, a few scenes stitched together on repeat and AI voice reading AI script.
It is fucking amazing to me that Google let YouTube fall so far so fast.
I don’t even click a video if it’s less than a year old now. Want to see a praying mantis eat a grasshopper? Wonder how clay is refined? Better off with an 11 year old Discovery Channel clip than anything 2026.
I just tried googling "fentanyl fold" and switching to the video tab, and zero of the first ten results were AI. They were also mostly not from YouTube. I also tried the same search on YouTube, and no AI there either among the first ten results (I didn't bother with the Shorts). I don't know why we get so different results.
Have seen this across the planet, it's not unique to Europe, I end up adding youtube to the search query because instagram or tiktok isn't what I'm looking for ever but that makes up the bulk of the results, instagram won't even show me the video without a login and is at the top wtf
Hugsbox · · focus · HN ↗
So obviously what appears right at the top is the AI summary, which told me "they've already secured their #4 position and made the playoffs". I knew this wasn't true, and I guess I could have just scrolled down a bit further and found my answer but now I was curious.
So I said "that's not true, they're still #5, what I want to know is _could they still make the playoffs_"
It says they've got an upcoming game against Ottawa, and if they win their chances are good. That game has already taken place, so I correct it again and finally I get a reasonable answer.
My question is: what's the point of the AI in the search engine if it itself isn't going to use the search engine first before answering? Like, I can't wrap my head around that. The answer is on the same page as its hallucination. It could have done a cursory look around before first hallucinating something completely false, and when corrected the first time giving me outdated information. It's meant to be A SEARCH ENGINE!
safety1st · · focus · HN ↗
The AI answer dominates the page, and is usually wrong, so it's just a waste of the most valuable space on the page.
The ads have proliferated, and rarely have what I need.
Video search results also take up a lot of the page, and are almost never what I want if I haven't clicked over to the Video tab. Again, just a big waste of space.
Speaking of the Video tab its accuracy/relevancy has gotten worse too.
The organic results have deteriorated, and are still competitive, but are no longer clearly and consistently better than Duckduckgo.
So it's duckduckgo as the default for me on all devices now. If I don't find what I want, which is maybe 30% of the time, I switch over to G just by adding !g to the query. G might have what I need in about half of those cases.
You can see why a lot of people just ask an LLM to do the web searching for them.
Across the board, this is all quite bad compared to web search from 10+ years ago.
If there's a single thing which has really pushed me away from Google, it's simply google.com devoting so much of the page to things that aren't organic web search.
SV_BubbleTime · · focus · HN ↗
I was taking with a family member about fentanyl zombies. They had never seen the lean/bend. So I pull up Google and click video which is YouTube results… ALL AI. All of it. All a couple months old, all filler, faked, a few scenes stitched together on repeat and AI voice reading AI script.
It is fucking amazing to me that Google let YouTube fall so far so fast.
I don’t even click a video if it’s less than a year old now. Want to see a praying mantis eat a grasshopper? Wonder how clay is refined? Better off with an 11 year old Discovery Channel clip than anything 2026.
martin- · · focus · HN ↗
someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗
Grimburger · · focus · HN ↗