So you're saying they have every reason to prioritize certain results over others regardless of their absolute relevance?

Well, I've only used it a little so far. If they are doing that, it's not immediately obvious.

One thing I've noticed is that if you put in a search query for something you can buy, it will generate a list of "shopping" search results in one of the tabs on the side that link directly to items in various storefronts, suggesting they may have affiliations with those particular websites and may get revenue when products are sold from people who followed through those links. That's how my affiliation with GOG works on my website: When someone clicks through to GOG from my website and buys a game from them, I earn a tiny portion of the sale.

But I still can't get over Avast rating it as "Average". It's the very first website I've ever been to that turns the Avast rating bar in the corner of my browser amber instead of green.

Though I did some more research into Blekko and discovered that for a time, they were offering their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) details for free, then began charging a subscription fee to access them after being in operation for a little over a year, which a lot of people felt was against one of their "Web Search Bill of Rights" rules, which reads: "Ranking data shall not be kept secret". I'd hate to break it to people but "pay-for" does not mean "secret". That's like saying the contents of a book are "secret" until you buy it and read it.

In any case, maybe a ton of people decided to retaliate by downranking the site in the aftermath of that? I dunno, I'm just finding it really hard to believe this search engine has been rated down so much when I've had no major trouble using it so far and can't find any highly negative things about it from other third party sites.

Yeah, the crapworks going on between youtube and the other google services is nuts.

I would rather have every separate google service use its own session. I want to be logged in at g+ all the time for instance but I may want to log out from mail...
And I really do think of youtube as something completely separate, it shouldn't belong to google at all.

The big problem is they're so damn good. I'm too comfortable and there's too much content. I don't know of any alternatives that are good enough to switch to.

I second duckduckgo.

Definitely over Bikko or whatever you call it.

Now go to duck and learn the bangs

https://duckduckgo.com/
https://duckduckgo.com/goodies <=== stuff to try !!

Yeah, I REALLY wish youtube would remember that I wan't to keep using my original Youtube username. I also wish it would stop logging me out of things. half the time I find my laptop or media box logged out of various google services for no reason. I don't know if this is a G+ problem, or a chrome problem. either way its freaking annoying.

I switched to firefox again a little while ago, and then switched back to chrome to reproduce a bug I reported to google.. but yeah, I think I need to switch back to firefox again.

Hear, hear! I ragequit Google+ a few months back when they first required a G+ profile. The whole move is retarded. At first they tried to make you use your real name (as used in Google+). That is absurd. The Internet works because of pseudo-anonymity. You can freely post your opinions and ideas without them easily being linked back to your identity (which could affect education and employment opportunities, relationships with friends, family, and sexual/romantic interests, etc.). Of course, that isn't to say that it's all that hard either, but you should at least be in control of which information you reveal about yourself where.

At first I let it go because they gave you an explicit option of "I don't want to use my real name" and let you bypass the switch, but after a few weeks they made it mandatory to have a "Google Plus" profile associated with your YouTube account. I assumed it would retain my original name (figuring that they would have learned that many or most people didn't want to use their real name on YouTube). After I linked my real profile everything I posted to YouTube (videos, comments) appeared with my real, full-name attached! I eventually found an option to change my name as it appears on YouTube. This ended up creating a new Google Plus "page" thing (WTF) for that new name. Then I realized that all of my favorites/playlists/likes/etc. didn't follow me so I tried to switch back to my original YouTube account. This created another Google Plus "page" and I began getting prompted every time I interacted with YouTube which account I wanted to use (of the 3 available). I ragequit Google Plus right there. I "deleted" my personal Google Plus account (the one I had before all this nonsense), though I'm told from friends that it still appears to be there. I haven't bothered to go near it since.

I still battle with the pages bullshit every time I use YouTube, and typically if I'm watching for a few hours in a night then I'll get prompted two or three times asking which account to use. THE LAST ONE I FUCKING CHOSE. FUCK!

Then yesterday I think it was I saw some notice about comments being integrated with Google Plus to improve the quality of conversations. I just shrugged, figuring it wouldn't affect me any because I don't use Google Plus. I figured it would just mean that YouTube comments would also appear in Google Plus for lusers. Instead of clicking "learn more" I just said to dismiss the notice. Lo and behold comments are now apparently missing from YouTube for me. I cannot find them. I cannot figure out how to find them. It says that you need to link your account with a Google Plus profile to use comments now, but it already fucking is because you short bus motherfuckers forced me to. It's actually linked up to 3 fucking Google Plus things. Nevertheless, I cannot use comments.

All that I know is that the Google+/YouTube teams are incompetent, evil assholes that care nothing about their users and should literally just be fired by Google. If Google as a whole is responsible for this then they need to stop pretending that their policy is do no evil because it's clear that they are doing it.

I concur. Stop using Google products. Personally, I'd like to wean myself right off of Google. I don't care how reliable their services (some of them) are. It's not worth the potential invasions of privacy and these forced regressions. Not to mention that Google is just becoming far too powerful. No company should have that much power over anybody, let alone entire societies.

As for search engines, Duck Duck Go is often offered as the preferred alternative. It allegedly doesn't track you, though it's hard to say if you can really trust them any more than you can trust Google. Also it seems that by default you are searching over plain HTTP so your searches are still sniff-able by eavesdroppers, etc. Plus under the hood I think that it is actually more of a proxy to Google and Bing and others. Your searches are still going through these evil engines. I think that image searches actually redirect you to Google... I don't really understand the point of that. I haven't quite figured it out yet so I still predominantly use Google.

I find that I rarely find what I'm looking for anyway though. I'm inclined to say that Google's results have been getting worse over the past few years. Generally when I search for something now the answer is either obvious (and basically any search engine will come up with the right handful of answers as top results), or I never actually find what I'm looking for and give up. Of course, part of that trend might arise from working for Microsoft-based companies and often searching for help with undocumented or poorly documented proprietary software...

Append:

From time to time I get fed up with this Google Plus fail integration and send vulgar feedback to the YouTube team. Beer may or may not be involved. I think I feel another one coming on... They also fucked up the G-mail compose UI in a similar, forced fashion. It seems that Google no longer cares about power users and only cares to cater to the sheeple lusers that are responsible for Facebook's success.

Says the guy making money off AdSense.

They are forcing me to use their fucking Google+, fuck you google, FUCK YOU MOTHEFUCKERS!

I'm a Youtube partner and now I can't post/replay comments inside my youtbe account, no, now they are forcing me to use their fucking Google+, fuck you Google, I won't post any comment, fuck fuck fuck Google, is always the same, power corrupts, Google became just too powerful, we need something else or they'll do retarded things like this more often.

I actually did give Duck Duck Go a try already. They lack image-searching functionality through themselves and require you to submit the search to a third party, either Bing or Google.

NOPE! Not happening!

I love google. Just ordered a Nexus 5 from them <3

One of the founders of YouTube

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Dear Google,

When the co founder of a web site that was so well made that it lead you to buy it tells you you're doing it wrong, then all I can say Google is, You're Doing It Wrong TM.

Regards,

Long Time Google User

I actually do not see what Google is trying to gain from doing something like this. However, judging by the size of their font now on YouTube, and a few other changes, I would say that they are pulling a bit of a Micro$oft and saying F*** desktop users. #MobileFTW.

That's the only thing I can think of...

As much as I don't like Facebook, I hate G+ more. I don't like the cross product merges.

In addition, the fact that video comments now get piped to gmail/G+ should be seen by someone as anticompetetive. It's basically forcing me to check my gmail and G+.
This is like when Windows9x merged Explorer with Internet Explorer and all kinds of anticompetetivness ensued.

Sorry Google, but you're being evil

One of the best parts of YouTube was being able to anonymously tell an extremely talented person that they suck and that you are better!!11! ... Those days, are gone