Why would something like Google search possibly be irrelevant?
well..
a lot of these search engines use search engine Optimization, seo to rank sites. It's also not secret that they choose what shows up and what does not.
Things like that have been a thing for years, and since there wasn't a good alternative search engines remained relevant as we users tolerated their direction.
Now you have Lemmy, Mastodon, Sharkey, Firefish (if it's still a thing) connected to the Fediverse. On the Fediverse there is no such thing as looking up a website, but rather you look up actual specific content and get real results handed back to you. A lot of these Federated services are split and one person pays for hosting a smaller server, and the next another, slowly building up the bigger federated Fediverse.
On Lemmy you can just type in Windows 11, and no website to click on to, no bs, you get to hear about what's happening with WIndows 11 from different voices. Is the *Windows cool, a tragedy, is there that one guy that *disfavors it, or is in favor of WIndows 11?
It's all there and you as a user gets to decide for yourself if you like all the results you see, or some, or none of them and then move on with your day as it should be.
Thoughts? Opinions? Statements? Judge rulings?
Is this a joke, hyperbole? To build on your example, what if I wanted to find out “how to disable Windows 11 update prompts” into lemmy’s search. Do you think I would get the answer I’m looking for?
I’m not saying I don’t want to be rid of google and all they do. I would pay for 10 proton mail accounts a month if just one of googles data centers spontaneously burst into flames right now!
…
Well I’m willing to wait a while longer… I have not tried Kagi yet, but I will as soon as I get bored with Midjourney. Hopefully someday we can collectively slip the yoke, but I suspect googles results will get a lot worse first.
I don't think you understand how difficult it is to search the amount of data that google sifts through before showing you results
How does the fact, that websites are written a certain way to please googles search engine, not apply to the fediverse? Even if all information was posted to or accessible through the fediverse, searching something will still use some kind of search engine. So people will also eventually start doing SEO, regardless if its Google's search engine or the fediverse's search engine that they are optimizing for.
Yes its problematic that google has a huge effect on what people see or don't see on the internet. But that wouldnt be any better for the fediverse. Its only better right now because you know what kind of information is on here, and you are getting a kind of pre-filtered selection of knowledge because of that. You wouldn't even start to search for washing machine repairs on here. You wouldn't try to look for local businesses here. If literally all of these things were here, the fediverse would need to start working on their search engine to stay fast enough to be usable because its just so much data, so many possible results. That would also result in some kind of arbitrary rule set that will make your post more likely to be shown as a result. And that will cause people to optimize their posts for the search engine.
And how exactly do you think google maps finds the results? If you think the search on google maps does not use a search engine, you have a lot to learn before having this discussion. Google maps is pretty much just a different interface for showing you results from the same, or at least extremely similar search engine as regular google uses
I agree its better to have several different options to pick from, monopolies are never a good thing. But that just means we don't want google to have a monopoly. It does not mean that we want search engines to be gone.
You are mixing things up that have nothing to do with each other. How is the fact that Facebook does not interact with old forums an argument for not having search engine services like google, duvkduckgo or bing? The federation in the fediverse definitely is nice and I hope it becomes the standard, but I really don't see how that would mean that we don't need search engine services anymore.
Okay fair enough, I'm just pointing out that your original claim that search engines are or should be irrelevant nowadays isn't really true.
My point about maps just was that there still is a search engine under the hood, so only using maps and not google does not enable you to say that you don't use search engines.
I agree about all that stuff you say about the fediverse but that has literally nothing to do with search engines.