I don't think I can trust Google as my search engine anymore

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Shift away from traditional search

  • Several commenters say “serious” knowledge queries no longer go to Google but to LLM-based tools or to curated/physical sources (encyclopedias, newspapers).
  • Some report using ChatGPT instead of search for many questions, especially in non-technical circles.

Perceived decline in Google search quality

  • Many describe Google as increasingly poor at “exact” or nuanced queries: ignoring quoted strings, rewriting queries, and favoring popular interpretations over literal terms.
  • Examples include: failure to find known phrases or titles, ignoring “without X” constraints, and mixing in unrelated formats (e.g., ELF vs NE file formats).
  • Complaints about spammy results, low-quality SEO sites, Pinterest/Quora pages, and generic “yoursearchterms.info”-style garbage.

Personalization, indexing, and inconsistent results

  • Some argue criticisms are mostly “vibes”; they re-ran examples from the article and got correct answers.
  • Others counter that heavy per-user customization means different people genuinely see different realities; bad results may be experiment- or profile-specific.
  • Discussion that Google is more selective about indexing due to AI-generated content, leading to missing low-traffic or niche sites.

Ads, shopping, and trust

  • Strong dislike of integrated shopping blocks and AI summaries that push real results down.
  • General skepticism about trusting an advertising company with being the “front door” to information.

Alternatives and their tradeoffs

  • Kagi is heavily praised: cleaner, fewer ads, custom filters, site boosting/blocking, and bangs for routing queries to Google/Bing when needed.
  • Concerns include paying for search, reliance on AI features, and possible shilling; defenders say user enthusiasm is organic and usage is still niche.
  • Other engines mentioned: Yandex, Baidu, DuckDuckGo, Brave Search; Google is still seen as best for local businesses and maps.

Multi-engine and self-hosted approaches

  • Some advocate never trusting a single engine: use SearxNG, YaCy, or round-robin multiple indices.
  • Self-hosted search is viewed as realistic only for restricted corpora; broad web indexing remains a massive barrier.

AI answers and reliability

  • Both Google’s AI overviews and other LLMs are criticized for inconsistent or contradictory answers to identical queries.
  • Consensus: AI can be useful but fundamentally untrustworthy without independent verification.