I had that happen too. Couldn’t find something with DDG. Hopped over to Google and was shocked at how completely unusable it was.
Comment on Google’s dominance on search is declining – for the first time ever!
Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 16 hours ago
I went long enough without using Google (probably a year-ish) that, when I accidentally made a Google search a few days ago, it was a jarring experience.
It felt wrong the same way other search engines did when I first deGoogled. It was kind of nice actually.
FauxPseudo@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
The irony is Gemini is really good, and cheap for them, yet somehow they made it utterly unbearable in search.
taladar@sh.itjust.works 16 hours ago
Gemini is really good at confidently talking nonsense but other than that I don’t really see where you get the idea that it is good. Mind you, that isn’t much better with the other LLMs.
flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz 16 hours ago
So it’s really good at the thing LLMs are good at. Don’t judge a fish by it’s ability to climb a tree etc…
taladar@sh.itjust.works 15 hours ago
No, it is mediocre at best compared to other models but LLMs in general have a very minimal usefulness.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
It can be grounded in facts. It’s great at RAG. But even alone, Gemini 2.5 is kinda shockingly smart.
…But the bigger point is how Google presents it. It shouldn’t be the top result of every search just thrown into your face, it should be a opt-in, conditional feature, and only if it can source a reliable website.
taladar@sh.itjust.works 15 hours ago
After just trying it again a few times today for a few practical problems that it not only misunderstood at first completely and then gave me a completely hallucinated answer to every single one I am sorry, but the only thing shocking about it is how stupid it is despite Google’s vast resources. Not that stupid/smart really apply to statistical analysis of language.
Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 16 hours ago
“Significantly better than ChatGPT” and “Good” aren’t the same. Like ipecac is better to drink than sewage water.