Worse, they often aren't even relevant: we searched "passport renewal" and you had to go the the second page to even get the government site that renews passports, and not ad scams masquerading as the real thing. Optimized for engagement, presumably.

Edit: come to think of it, I don't know why I still use Google. I don't care if they track me. But when they have been actively try to prevent me from finding the information I'm looking for, and instead try to scam me?

Why don't you use an adblocker or Brave browser?

Even after that, for whatever reason, the next tranche of links is a mixture of AI slop and shopping links. If I'm looking for information about something and not a product to buy, I often have to, gasp, go to the 2nd page of results.