There are other search engines than google. I really have no problem finding what Im looking for except when I use google.

Genuine question - this isn't some "gotcha" sarcastic comment - but what search engines do you use that are an actual improvement? The only one I know is Marginalia, which I love, but is more of a discovery tool for old sites than for actual relevant information.

For a range of questions - ones which are complex to distill for google, I'm using ChatGPT occasionally.

I recently wanted to understand better the position of the rising and setting sun, and it did an excellent job of explaining where my mental model of the sun was inaccurate.

Kagi is the big one. LLMs are useful for a specific subset of topics and questions. But mostly I do use KAgi

Google created the situation, but it's not the reason why data is held behind login/pay-walls everywhere across the net.

>> A basic test is to ask how quickly you can find information about a topic that is unbiased by commercial interests.

I'm not really sure that test tells you anything about the state of the web in general, and less the state of the internet, other than (perhaps) how good one site is at one specific query.

Plus you've picked categories (medicine, cosmetics, nutrition) which are rife with commercial interests, endless fringe theories, and plenty of "bad science". And, to be honest, the searches I've done for recipes over the past few years have all been very successful. But hey, maybe I'm lucky.

I mean in all fairness, name one unbiased source you’ve heard of ever.