As you probably know, my team and I have put together a research report on the 11 search engines that are awful when it comes to censorship. And the 2 search engines that aren’t so bad.
Worst in our testing is Duck Duck Go. When it came to censorship, it had worse results than Google, worse results that Yahoo, it even had worse results than the Bill Gates owned search engine Bing.
There was a time in which Google was amazing. It had the goal of giving the person searching exactly what the person wanted. Somewhere around 2015, more sinister elements in the company had finally taken enough control to change that central focus. It turned into a search engine dedicated to giving people what Google wanted them to see.
That’s a very big difference. When Google was once the anti-newspaper, empowering you to have any information you wanted, it just turned back into a glorified newspaper. That is to say: a person who sees himself as your better believes it is for your own good if he curates your reading for you.
That is what a mainstream newspaper is. And that is what Google has become. Both discourage insightful questions.
I have two exceptions to that though, exceptions kept alive at Google HQ. Both are precious programs that are so wonderful in so many ways.
1.) Google Scholar
Court cases are very hard to find online. Court decisions are hard to find. There are many, difficult to access sources for that information. Similarly, there are many databases of scientific journals. Google Scholar joins a few of those into one place. Any serious research I do whether legal or scientific, includes a visit to Google Scholar to help me identify the breath of research that is out there.
2.) Google Advanced Search
The main Google search has become awful at giving you what you want, however Google lets you do more specific searches on the Google Advanced Search. That means with a little more work, you can still search way more effectively than you could before Google existed. It’s not a perfect tool, but the advanced search is way better than the Google search bar.
And let me throw in a third one for you.
3.) Google Amp
Google Amp is a news aggregator and news media readership tracker. I think Google Amp is an awful program, with one exception. When you hit a mainstream media paywall, you can almost always (4 out of 5 times) go to Google and have success getting through the paywall. All you do is copy paste the URL (or the exact title of the piece) into the Google search bar and there is a pretty good chance it will get you around the paywall. This is because Google cut special deals with those media companies to let its Amp users around their paywalls.
I really dislike big tech. I really dislike Google. But you know what, I think it’s important to be discerning enough to know what is good and what is bad. For my needs right now, as someone seeking truth in the world, these are three ways that Google remains a useful research tool.
Agreed re: DuckDuckGo. I wrote about them shadow-banning my Substack a while back:
https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/i/60878565/duckduckgo-shadow-banning-me
They appear to have responded to user complaints as it’s showing up now, thankfully, but there’s no telling how long that will last.
As for Presearch, that’s what I switched from DDG to and have been generally happy with the results, only I’ve noticed my Substack versions of my articles either don’t show up at all or are buried deep in the search results (whereas everyone else’s repostings of them does appear).
When I searched for “50 Reasons to Give Your Child the COVID Shot,” for example, your Stack comes up (which is how I found you) but not mine. So now I fear Presearch is shadow-banning me, and I thought they were good guys :-(