Mostly because it’s better than other options though. For instance, when I use DDG, lots of boolean handles just don’t work. If I look for “cat sweater -dog”, I’m going to get nothing but dog sweaters. I find fewer useful, productive results on DDG than I do on Google. Other search engines are often even worse.
If I look for “cat sweater -dog”, I’m going to get nothing but dog sweaters.
I tested this out, and I consistently got cat sweaters:
so odds are that the boolean handles issue is either messier (triggered under more specific conditions than in your example) or already fixed.
That said, I do agree with you that quality is one of the factors here; since Google search is considerably better than the alternatives, it feels no pressure to improve. In this aspect we might as well ask why the others are considerably worse - but the problem is still there, we’ve been relying on a single search engine to find stuff for us, and that’s a big issue with a system that was supposed to be as decentralised as the internet.
Mostly because it’s better than other options though. For instance, when I use DDG, lots of boolean handles just don’t work. If I look for “cat sweater -dog”, I’m going to get nothing but dog sweaters. I find fewer useful, productive results on DDG than I do on Google. Other search engines are often even worse.
I tested this out, and I consistently got cat sweaters:
so odds are that the boolean handles issue is either messier (triggered under more specific conditions than in your example) or already fixed.
That said, I do agree with you that quality is one of the factors here; since Google search is considerably better than the alternatives, it feels no pressure to improve. In this aspect we might as well ask why the others are considerably worse - but the problem is still there, we’ve been relying on a single search engine to find stuff for us, and that’s a big issue with a system that was supposed to be as decentralised as the internet.