Data on search engine market share is available, but I wonder what that looks like for Lemmy users in particular, who I would assume lean more technical than the average user, so probably use DuckDuckGo and alternates more than Google.
I use a mix of DuckDuckGo and Kagi. I’ll also use ChatGPT, which can be good if you’re careful to verify the answers it gives you as a check against hallucinations. It’s useful for short, direct answers without ads or SEO bullshit.
This article on Ars (and if you’re not a subscriber, you absolutely should be, as they are the best tech journalists out there) inspired the question: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/google-admits-reddit-protests-make-it-harder-to-find-helpful-search-results
Fucking Reddit. Enshittification ruins everything.
Can we stop trying to coin cute terms like “enshittification”? What that term describes is just capitalism working as intended.
There is a term that describes this behavior that we’ve been using for at least decades (to describe behavior that has happened since the inception of capitalism): rent seeking.
“Enshittification” has quickly become commonly used after it was described here: https://doctorow.medium.com/tiktoks-enshittification-bb3f5df91979
It’s a specific process that tech companies seem to go through, and differs from other things, such as rent seeking.