I have not used Google for a couple of years (with the exception of Streetview where they do not have any competition at all). So I cannot comment on the quality of their search results. They are a close to monopolist / duopolist / oligopolist in too many areas. Ethically such a bad company that I don't want to touch them with a stick. Unfortunately masses don't understand that and contine to use them. And engineers are greedy enough to work for the evil.

iOS has a streetview alternative.

I personally hardly ever use any version of streetview because I don’t feel the need to so forgive me if I am missing what’s so great about Google’s version.

Where did you find a streetview alternative? It's not in the Maps app from what I can see.

I do, and I don't find it too bad. I switched from DDG back to Google recently because I realised I had to use !g on most of my searches.

One day I tried a Google search and noticed that everything "above the fold" on the first page was either a Google property, an advertisement, or both.

I stopped using Google for web search, but I still use it for Google search.

Part of me wonders if the ad market is just radically different on Google in the US or other parts of the world, or if I just make very non-commercial searches. I don't see many ads, unless I'm actively going to Google Shopping essentially in search of them.

I do see the Google info box style results, but I find these to be one of the most useful parts and it's one of the reasons I like using Google for things that are basic facts, media fact finding (like "who was that person in that show" style queries), etc.

In my experience (American), the top 1-4 results are ads/sponsored links. Sometimes, very relevant to the search. Most of the time, not what I'm looking for.

I only use google search on my phone because I have a pixel, and the google searchbar is so well integrated into the launcher. If I don't like the results, I can just open a new tab and the default search is DuckDuckGo. Besides the ads, I'd say the searches are usually the same quality.

I switched to Kagi about 3 months ago, and to ChatGPT for a lot of info searches.

If they wanted to fix it they would. Most likely someone came up with the great idea of "Hey if search sucks, some losers will pay for AI hoping that fixes it, we are so smart"

I don't now if the bad results are because no one has written about the topic I want to learn or google search results are just terrible..