The "just google it" mantra has probably held back quite a lot of interesting conversations and debate
I've always been a "lurker" on all platforms and communities because when I do have a question or would like to contribute my first thought has become:
Actually, let me google it first
In which case I'll usually have some answer. Usually it isn't a complete answer but enough for me to not want to share my question anymore.
Plus it's not even that useful of a statement in this day and age. Google isn't what it used to be, and even if it was, a lot of time it struggled with very specific and detailed problems. It would often just point you to the community where you were told to "google it"
Tangential but I’m curious, when was it that you noticed every search engine was broken by SEO? I started to see signs 6 years ago, but they became undeniably unusable about 3 years ago for me.
yep, SEO has ruined google search. Now a days a lot of people add "reddit" to the search term because its more efective, only issue is when the subreddit is closed and internet archive only has one snapshot that was the moment the thread was created and no answers are there haha.