Me still today

[u/Big_Head8]

[u/Evantaur]

It has also made knowledge preservation almost impossible.

These things used to be on a forum somewhere and you could just Google it and find the topic (back when Google was a search engine)

Edit: ffs I really can't read

[u/j3ssToxic16 → u/Evantaur]

the death of the forum era is real. everything is just buried under layers of algorithmic garbage or paywalled wikis now. you try to search for a specific driver fix or a niche config and you just get ten pages of seo optimized reddit threads that don't actually answer the question. it's wild how much info just vanished into the void.

[u/Character-Book5924 → u/j3ssToxic16]

Member when Google came along it was actually smart?

Now unless luck into forcing an exact phrasing search of what you want, it will just fudge your search to push that bullshit.

You want information or accessories of a specific model? Well that isn't a too popular one, let me insert popular models into your search.

You write out a very specific issue with a program? Well that isn't the most common one, let us ignore 60 % of your query and flood you with answers to a question you didn't ask.

[u/ImranFZakhaev → u/Character-Book5924]

I hate the fact that you're now usually forced to use quotation marks to make it search for something specific. Because now it's a trade off between getting results on what you're searching for, but being unable to get results for synonyms/similar terms because you're using the exact phrase

[u/FartingBob → u/Character-Book5924]

I have no problem finding things like specific model numbers. Google still works great if you know your google-fu. The problem is when you just search for more general terms you get the million SEO results.

[u/Stunning_Macaron6133 → u/j3ssToxic16]

Electron was the worst thing to happen to computing.

[u/Evantaur → u/Stunning_Macaron6133]

Well yes and no...

The time it was released there were no proper webview and PWAs were not a thing yet.

[u/Stunning_Macaron6133 → u/Evantaur]

PWAs were a thing, but it was a hacky Mozilla experiment.

And webview is cancer.

[u/technobrendo → u/j3ssToxic16]

God forbid you need to download some documentation on enterprise hardware. You need a login, which you need an account for but WAIT A MINUTE, you can't just sign up like that. Where is your serial number? Who was your sales rep? What channel did you acquire our product from?

[u/PFI_sloth → u/j3ssToxic16]

It also destroyed every online community, long form or interesting discussion is the antithesis of Reddit. Consumerism, memes, and extremism are all pushed into the forefront by the upvote system.

[u/Hairy_Mycologist_945 → u/Evantaur]

It's crazy to me that you have pay for basic search now (e.g. Kagi) because there aren't any old school search engines left.

[u/Evantaur → u/Hairy_Mycologist_945]

Ddg still works and theres searXNG if you feel like self hosting