I'm going to call it: The Web is dead. Thanks to "AI" I spend more time now digging through searches trying to find something useful than I did back in 2005. And the sites you do find are largely garbage.
As a random example: just trying to find a particular popular set of wireless earbuds takes me at least 10 minutes, when I already know the company, the company's website, other vendors that sell the company's goods, etc. It's just buried under tons of dreck. And my laptop is "old" (an 8-core i7 processor with 16GB of RAM) so it struggles to push through graphics-intense "modern" websites like the vendor's. Their old website was plain and worked great, letting me quickly search through their products and quickly purchase them. Last night I literally struggled to add things to cart and check out; it was actually harrowing.
Fuck the web, fuck web browsers, web design, SEO, searching, advertising, and all the schlock that comes with it. I'm done. If I can in any way purchase something without the web, I'mma do that. I don't hate technology (entirely...) but the web is just a rotten egg now.
On Amazon, you used to be able to search the reviews and Q&A section via a search box. This was immensely useful. Now, that search box first routes your search to an LLM, which makes you wait 10-15 seconds while it searches for you. Then it presents its unhelpful summary, saying "some reviews said such and such", and I can finally click the button to show me the actual reviews and questions with the term I searched.
This is going to be the thing that makes me quit Amazon. If I'm missing something and there's still a way to to a direct search, please tell me.
I used to be able to say search for Trek bike derailleur hanger and the first result would be what I wanted. Now I have to scroll past 5 ads to buy a new bike, one that's a broken link to a third party, and if I'm really lucky, at the bottom of page 1 will be the link to that part's page.
Sounds like your laptop is wholly out of date, you need to buy the next generation of laptops on Amazon that can handle the modern SEO load. I recommend the:
LEEZWOO 15.6" Laptop - 16GB RAM 512GB SSD PC Laptop, Quad-Core N95 Processor Up to 3.1GHz, Laptop Computers with Touch ID, WiFi, BT4.2, for Students/Business
Can vouch for this. It’s the first non-Google search alternative I’ve used that has 100% replaced Google. I don’t need Google as a fallback like I did with others.
I've been slowly detaching myself from the web for the past 10 years. These days I mostly build offline apps using native technologies. Those capabilities are still around. They just receded for a while because they'd gotten so polluted with toolbars and malware. But now the malware is on the other side, and native apps are cool again. If you know where to look. Here's my shingle: https://akkartik.name/freewheeling-apps
On the other hand, what you call "The Web" seems to be just what you can get at through search engines. There's still the old web, the thing that's mediated by relationships and reputation rather than aggregation services with billions of users. Like the link I shared above. Or this heroically moderated site we're using right now.
It's a lot LOT easier for me as an adult to ignore ads online than it is for my kids in brick and mortar stores to ignore the candy and toys placed at their eye level.
Ah, you mean the web version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkers_(horse_tack) . I don't think that helps when you're stopped in your tracks by an upsell. Dominos won't let you order a pizza online until you've declined garlic bread, cinnamon rolls and a liter of pepsi three times. And you can't just click "pepperoni pizza near me", you have to build your pepperoni pizza, after putting in your zip code, selecting the store, carry out, then click build again, sure you don't want buffalo wings too?, ....
> Their old website was plain and worked great, letting me quickly search through their products and quickly purchase them. Last night I literally struggled to add things to cart and check out; it was actually harrowing.
Hey, who cares about making services that work when we can give people a cool chatbot assistant and a 1800 number with no real-person alternative to the decision tree
I suppose it is just Amazon problems. I have never lived in the area where Amazon is prevalent. Where I live, search engines still can't find synonyms or process misspellings.
As a random example: just trying to find a particular popular set of wireless earbuds takes me at least 10 minutes, when I already know the company, the company's website, other vendors that sell the company's goods, etc. It's just buried under tons of dreck. And my laptop is "old" (an 8-core i7 processor with 16GB of RAM) so it struggles to push through graphics-intense "modern" websites like the vendor's. Their old website was plain and worked great, letting me quickly search through their products and quickly purchase them. Last night I literally struggled to add things to cart and check out; it was actually harrowing.
Fuck the web, fuck web browsers, web design, SEO, searching, advertising, and all the schlock that comes with it. I'm done. If I can in any way purchase something without the web, I'mma do that. I don't hate technology (entirely...) but the web is just a rotten egg now.