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Ask HN: Could we just re-invent original Google?
11–20 of 40 posts
Re: Ask HN: Could we just re-invent original Google?
#12I think the question boils down on how to stop enshittification. Because if we were to recreate all the enshittified platforms, what would stop them from becoming enshittified anew? We must understand the mechanism of enshittification and fundamentally break this mechanism, making it nearly impossible for a new platform to enter the enshittification cycle again.
Re: Ask HN: Could we just re-invent original Google?
#13You mean, like https://www.kagi.com ? A search engine you pay for. Every link is there to serve _you_. There are not ads.
I was fine with the simple ads in the sidebar of the Google results of yore. It felt like a fair deal.
Re: Ask HN: Could we just re-invent original Google?
#14The real prize is to deshittify the content on the web. Ignoring copyrights for a moment, it should be possible to rewrite pages in 1000s of sites down to just the information. StackOverflow could just have the Q&As, news sites could just have the news, Pinterest would just have the pictures. Remove all the signup nags and popups. With good tools, one person could probably maintain the deshittifier for a few sites, a…
Reminds me of the word of the year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
Re: Ask HN: Could we just re-invent original Google?
#15The real prize is to deshittify the content on the web. Ignoring copyrights for a moment, it should be possible to rewrite pages in 1000s of sites down to just the information. StackOverflow could just have the Q&As, news sites could just have the news, Pinterest would just have the pictures. Remove all the signup nags and popups. With good tools, one person could probably maintain the deshittifier for a few sites, a…
ChatGPT is basically the deshittifier that rewrites thousands of sites to just the information…? And it has a much better interface than original Google. Every query starts with the equivalent of “I’m feeling lucky”, but then you can ask further questions.
AI generated garbage is literally one of the biggest reasons search has turned to shit[0]. Even with SEO, Google was sometimes useful. Now most search results just return AI hallucinations.
[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38952526
[1]https://aftermath.site/the-internet-is-full-of-ai-dogshit
Re: Ask HN: Could we just re-invent original Google?
#16Do we still need Google Search as much as in the past though? most of my search queries are targeted towards specific web sites: wikipedia, stack overflow, youtube.
And overall, I don't think I suffer too much from SEO on Google Search. On the other hand, I'm very upset with the way Youtube has gone. It's harder and harder to find quality content even though it's there. I mostly don't want to see the professional youtubers.
Re: Ask HN: Could we just re-invent original Google?
#17The problem isn't Google, it's the internet.
Google might be deliberately making their search results "worse" (for whatever value of "worse" you prefer), but nobody else is doing all that much better, despite the obvious motivation to do so. I'm a DuckDuckGo user, but I don't think that the results I get are particularly better than Google results.
When people complain about Google, the root cause is usually that the thing they're looking for doesn't exist anywhere on the internet. Spam publishing sometimes drowns out the thing you're looking for, but often that's illusory - if you clicked through every single results page, you still wouldn't find what you're looking for, because it isn't there. A search engine can boost the signal-to-noise ratio in the results that it gives users, but it can't generate signal where none exists. Fixing that problem is altogether more difficult.
Re: Ask HN: Could we just re-invent original Google?
#18Do we still need Google Search as much as in the past though? most of my search queries are targeted towards specific web sites: wikipedia, stack overflow, youtube. And overall, I don't think I suffer too much from SEO on Google Search. On the other hand, I'm very upset with the way Youtube has gone. It's harder and harder to find quality content even though it's there. I mostly don't want to see the professional you…
Absolutely we do, of course. I do not at all want to be limited to wikipedia and reddit and stackoverflow. I want all unknown tiny random geocities and tripod.
Re: Ask HN: Could we just re-invent original Google?
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
ChatGPT is basically the deshittifier that rewrites thousands of sites to just the information…? And it has a much better interface than original Google. Every query starts with the equivalent of “I’m feeling lucky”, but then you can ask further questions.
AI generated garbage is literally one of the biggest reasons search has turned to shit[0]. Even with SEO, Google was sometimes useful. Now most search results just return AI hallucinations. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38952526 [1] https://aftermath.site/the-internet-is-full-of-ai-dogshit
That’s primarily Google’s problem though. ChatGPT was trained on web content before the AI deluge.
Re: Ask HN: Could we just re-invent original Google?
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
AI generated garbage is literally one of the biggest reasons search has turned to shit[0]. Even with SEO, Google was sometimes useful. Now most search results just return AI hallucinations. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38952526 [1] https://aftermath.site/the-internet-is-full-of-ai-dogshit
That’s primarily Google’s problem though. ChatGPT was trained on web content before the AI deluge.
I would be a problem for any search engine focused on relevance, because this content is proliferating throughout the web, Google is poisoned because everything is poisoned.