GoKawiilMegan Ellis / Android Authority
Google Search is the dominant search engine for a reason. It has comprehensive indexing of sites around the world, its search operators make finding specific results easier, and it’s the default for many browsers and devices. However, if you’ve been on the internet as long as I have, you’ll remember a time when Google Search just felt better overall.
I stuck with the search engine until last year. Now, I barely use it at all. And that’s thanks to how well its replacement — Brave Search — works for me.
Are you still happy with the Google Search experience? 171 votes Yes. 22 % I have mixed feelings. 23 % No, but I still use it. 26 % I don't use Google Search. 29 %
Google Search stopped feeling usable
Joe Maring / Android Authority
The Google Search experience has been deteriorating for years. Genuinely relevant results are supplanted by sponsored results, the shopping tab is filled with irrelevant products, and you often have to scroll past a bunch of bloat before you find what you’re actually looking for.
For years, I gritted my teeth and begrudgingly dealt with the watered-down experience, believing that alternatives simply did not have the comprehensive indexing of a behemoth like Google. After all, if Microsoft’s Bing was still struggling years down the line, what hope did other alternatives have? I also wasn’t interested in a paid Google Search alternative.
Ads, increasingly bloated widgets, and forced AI summaries make it harder to find the actual results you're looking for.
AI Overviews proved to be the final straw. They added more bloat to the search experience, were often inaccurate, and I couldn’t turn them off. These overviews differed from helpful snippets because they could be the product of AI hallucinations. Snippets were direct quotes from sites, but overviews were generated by an LLM.
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