nixCraft 🐧DuckDuckGo's AI-free search saw nearly 28% more visits in the week following Google's insistence that people love AI mode. Is anyone surprised by this result?
I have seen this before with their forced Google+ adoption game. Users aren't adopting Google AI at the rate shareholders or C suits expect, so they now force the adoption at the cost of search engine. Just like Google+ died out, this forced AI mode in Google search is going to die and I hope it will be the end of the company as well.
Sablebadger@nixCraft The thing is, I actually liked G+, it was a pretty decent platform all things considered. But oh well, I think other platforms had beaten them to punch, and you go where the people are (at that time it was FB which wasn't as awful as it is now).
But the FORCE EVERYONE TO USE IT tactic is never ever going to work because users have choices (somewhat limited) but they do have choices.
Eggs now in different baskets.@Sablebadger @nixCraft Google disabled the search modifier "+" in advance of launching G+.
It enshittified the search syntax that used to exist in Google search.
Up to that point you could search for a specific term using +searchterm.
Also IIRC if you wanted to search for a specific phrase you could do +"specific search term as a phrase"
As well as (AFAIR) +specific +search +term +as +a +phrase.