it wouldn't be that hard, to be better than google at search

Around 2000, everyone realised they no longer had to go between Altavista, Excite, Yahoo Search.  Google gave good search results, fast, and wasn't bogged down by shitware.

Today, in 2023, the quality of Google's answers-inline results is poor.

In the above example, google declines to answer the query in the units I asked for.  Maybe kmph is a funny way of putting it.  Doesn't matter.

Is anyone bothering trying to improve on it?

To take a much more general obvious low-hanging fruit: the search results don't link properly to the web pages in the search results.

The thing displayed on the page starts off like a URL, but isn't one.  That's the quasiURL "https://www.rmets.org > metmatters > beaufort-wind-scale"

The actual link, which I just got with my browser's "Copy link" function is: "https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwj6-5iazIKDAxVlUqQEHQ_dCi0QFnoECA4QAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rmets.org%2Fmetmatters%2Fbeaufort-wind-scale&usg=AOvVaw2wIzOmhzZaFzscm6YAMMmP&opi=89978449". (Hopefully that doesn't contain something that allows my session to be stolen).  When you hover over the link, the real URL gets displayed in the status bar (on my browser), so google are doing something to spoof that.  The user could probably decode the redirect URL under google.com, to get the actual URL.

If the user watches the address bar, it briefly contains the redirect URL under google.com, before changing to the actual search result link.

This then redirects to "https://www.rmets.org/metmatters/beaufort-wind-scale".  

In this case, you can get the URL by replacing " > " with "/" in the quasiURL, but that's not always the case.  Sometimes the search result URL has query parameters.  Sometimes the quasiURL is truncated and with ellipsis.

Presumably this is done for tracking.

A search service with proper links would be more usable.  The user would be able to copy URLs straight out of search results.  They wouldn't have to briefly experience the google.com redirect URL in their address bar.  Display of the right URL in the status bar on hover wouldn't depend on spoofing.

The only reason google gets away with such poor search is that no one is bothering to compete.

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