Why would something like Google search possibly be irrelevant?
well..
a lot of these search engines use search engine Optimization, seo to rank sites. It's also not secret that they choose what shows up and what does not.
Things like that have been a thing for years, and since there wasn't a good alternative search engines remained relevant as we users tolerated their direction.
Now you have Lemmy, Mastodon, Sharkey, Firefish (if it's still a thing) connected to the Fediverse. On the Fediverse there is no such thing as looking up a website, but rather you look up actual specific content and get real results handed back to you. A lot of these Federated services are split and one person pays for hosting a smaller server, and the next another, slowly building up the bigger federated Fediverse.
On Lemmy you can just type in Windows 11, and no website to click on to, no bs, you get to hear about what's happening with WIndows 11 from different voices. Is the *Windows cool, a tragedy, is there that one guy that *disfavors it, or is in favor of WIndows 11?
It's all there and you as a user gets to decide for yourself if you like all the results you see, or some, or none of them and then move on with your day as it should be.
Thoughts? Opinions? Statements? Judge rulings?
Like on Mastodon, I can search for information on Google, Duckduckgo and you'l see all the latest human input on these topics that's available. Whether you search for hashtags or for posts specifically.
Or on Lemmy, you can search for posts or literally entire communities dedicated to what you are looking for.
When I say the Fediverse, I'm talking about as a whole, when you are searching for posts, and the like. The Fediverse will generally strive to actually show you everything that's available. It's a step from forward from what the modern search engine provides it's users.
Do search engines have some advantages, sure, but are they hindered severely by seo, also yes. To the point that any advantages a Google search could have just isn't worth it.