this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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Google search is over (mastodon.social)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by JoBo@feddit.uk to c/technology@lemmy.world
 

Via @rodhilton@mastodon.social

Right now if you search for "country in Africa that starts with the letter K":

  • DuckDuckGo will link to an alphabetical list of countries in Africa which includes Kenya.

  • Google, as the first hit, links to a ChatGPT transcript where it claims that there are none, and summarizes to say the same.

This is because ChatGPT at some point ingested this popular joke:

"There are no countries in Africa that start with K." "What about Kenya?" "Kenya suck deez nuts?"

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[–] fernandu00@lemmy.ml 27 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I've been using DDG for a year and like the search results but what bothers me is that you can't exclude a word from your query with minus sign!

[–] Faresh@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago

Quoting also doesn't work on DDG, AFAIK.

[–] cloudy1999@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago

I've noticed that, too. It wasn't always that way though. A couple of years ago, minus worked no problem.

[–] Fungah@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

DDG is just bing and I think google too? I don't know what's happening but over the last 2 years or so every search engine has been getting worse and worse and worse. They're all borderline un fucking usable.

Except kagi. Which you have to pay for. Which I am totally fucking okay with given the state of everything else.

[–] shitescalates@midwest.social 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the suggestion

[–] akulium@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Try search.brave.com, it can do that.

They have their own index unlike ddg which is just a proxy for bing. Bing removed the minus feature at some point.

[–] ViaRationis@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I use DDG, but !g is imprinted on my muscle memory for life.