It isn't (just) laziness. A friend of mine downloaded Google Chrome because they knew it was a secure browser to use... except that the search result page provided them with a poisoned installed full of malware.
If you're not technically inclined there are minefields everywhere.
I bought my father-in-law a new laptop, wiped it and installed it with just what said he needed.
Only to watch him say "I want to get vlc," type vlc into Google, skip over the VideoLAN - downloads link, and click some virus-infested link further down because the title of the link was "Get vlc."
VideoLAN - Official page for VLC media player, the Open ...
The other results are all either directly or almost directly associated with VLC. I get no scam sites in the top 10 results. Have the search results improved? Is this the effect of search personalization? What gives?
That was the top result for him, but the problem was it didn't say "VLC" right up front. I believe he grabbed what looks to be the 12th link when I use a private browser, but who knows what search personalization he'd picked up along the way, since he had logged into Google. I know it was at least half-way down.
Never underestimate the laziness of the human mind scanning for something. Now, I do think the text back then (1.5 years ago) might have said "VideoLAN - downloads" and that was all -- which is worse -- but I recall seeing "VLC" obviously in the description under the link, and it could have been in the link title.
Oh, well, then I understand. I wouldn't expect someone to actually read the description. Even I wouldn't underestimate laziness by that much :) I'm glad the VLC folks learned their lesson.
Another scary one: search for “Flash update”, “Java update”, etc. If you use Yahoo, Bing, etc. you'll have to screen past dozens of adware-or-worse links before finding the official sites – perfect for the next time a security exploit hits the news and viewers are told to upgrade ASAP.
People have reported this to various slackers for years but companies like Yahoo are loathe to turn down ad revenue and they still have millions of users.
Agreed, but it's still a lot of people in aggregate and I suspect it has a notably higher percentage of the inexperienced users who would be most vulnerable to this and probably aren't like to switch to Google / DDG any time soon.
If you're not technically inclined there are minefields everywhere.