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Google says mobile-first indexing is complete after almost 7 years
Google still recommends glue for your pizza
You won't be able to find anything that doesn't render on mobile, but you'll still get suggestions to keep cheese from sliding off your pizza using glue. Google, having become the de facto gatekeeper of the web, continues to remake the web. A web of small devices, a web of taps and little typing, a web of consumption. Whether that's in a way that's useful to everyday people isn't clear, but something else is: Google has a very big stick, and it will continue to use it.
Standardizing on Google, collectively, was easy, and a huge mistake. A problem we should've seen coming decades ago.
Not that Bing's any better. Nor Duck Duck Go. AI results, AI assistants, AI AI AI. I'm wondering about kagi. $5/mo for 300 searches, $10/mo unlimited. It's supposed to be good, but if we're being honest? $60-120/year is too much money to pay for search. Good search is something I'm willing to pay for, but something more like (absolutely spitballing) $10-20/year. The problem with $5-10/mo is that everyone, and I mean everyone, is trying to get that out of us. And I have no issue paying when it's meaningful - I just threw $100 at my Mastodon instance to help cover costs.
I was surprised at how quickly I decided to kick in - and for like, about as much as I pay annually to stream baseball. But you know what? Mastodon's good, my instance is good, and it really didn't feel like a decision at all.
But back to the point, it feels like everyone wants a subscription. And I know the alternative is a product where I'm the product. But I've only got so much. We all do.
So where does that leave me? Pinning my hopes on marginalia.nu, I guess, which isn't perfect, but is free, is something, and maybe most importantly, feels like something out of the old web, a search site that wants to help you find things, rather than a site that wants to show you things. A small distinction and a huge one.