I think they mean google 20 years ago, like missing YouTube before google bought it, or instagram etc. back when you competed by making a better product, and not ya know, buying the better product and making it worse.

Before Google we used to have to go to a library to source information.

Google was really awesome at a point in time. You could throw it the most obscure query using natural language with in-text Boolean operators and the number one result would direct you to an html-only geocities page that hadn’t been updated since 1999 with the EXACT answer you needed and citations from 3-4 actual, physical books to back up that answer. IMHO, those were peak times for the internet as an information resource; approximately 1998-2008.

Now every page just seems to be a bloated, poorly-coded monument to engagement baiting, subscription model services, and ad revenue generation. It’s genuinely sad to have watched the degradation over the years…

100%, it’s weird to feel like my information access has gone back down to 90’s levels. Half the time you’re better off going to the library and flippin pages!

Are there any search engines out there that operate just on a whitelist model? A content-agnostic white list-based engine that manually categories sites via human reviewers, and filters only for SEO spam and AI slop?

SEO is what ruined Google, then AI came along and was used to SEO the shit out of the shittiest websites

SEO is a never-ending arms race, and you’re right - it’s the real thing that spoiled the “golden web” we remember. Search engines have actually improved, but SEO has “improved” more.

You say that, but Google has explicitly been made worse in order to force people to look through more search results, so that Google can make more money on ads. Remember when you could use logical operators in search criteria to get better results?

Yeah, Google has been trashed as well, “Don’t be evil” evaporated after about 10 years.

To get “old style results” try an AI prompt like: Give me a 2006 style Google search result of the modern web for the search “Apple Pie Recipe”

And if you like your boolean operators you could try: Give me a 2006 style Google search result of the modern web for the search: Apple Pie Recipe Not “Martha Stewart”

I’d much rather just take my searches elsewhere.

I’d do that, if I got better results elsewhere - so far, for my purposes, when I try DDG or Bing or Brave or whatever, I’m not impressed.

Neither am I - but the results usually aren’t worse than Google’s, and with fewer ads.

I may need to give Kagi a try though.