Is Google search becoming more shit in order to have us spend more time scrolling?

[Ducktop]

So that they can collect more data about our online behaviour and therefore sell us more things/sell the data to others who sell us more things?

Google (ha ha) 'google enshittification'. This a drama that was uncovered about 2 years ago, I think, that internally google decided to make the search function worse, so that people would search again and so spend more time with google. Basically it is more profitable to be less effective.

I stopped asking Google anything the occasional image search. Pretty much all my questions go through CGPT nowadays.

You used to be able to specify what you wanted quite well. Now no matter how many of the original "tricks" you use, Google decides what it thinks you want to know about.

I second reading up on Enshittification! You'll get really angry though!

I have barely used Google for about a year now. Grok gives far better answers - in fact so does Gemini, the AI bot owned by Google

This in spades.

See also "linkedin" which is perhaps the apex of this

I heard the other week that they realised they could do higher accuracy but people didn't like it because it scared them (general gist) so they made it worse - noticeably so I think - rather than giving us what they could. Sounded dodgy to me and I know exactly what you mean, it feels disingenuous at times and I feel it isn't for our benefit. The internet is eating itself.