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Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

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Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#51

Post by anonymoushn »

Jimmc414 wrote: post #42

I just discovered how poor the search results are if you're logged in with your Google account. Have to log out or view in incognito mode just to see what you were searching for. Also I didn't realize how censored Google's results were until I started comparing them side by side with DDG.

Can you search as if you're from a different country? My incognito searches are useless because they are region-specific.

Edit: Yes, you can do this if you click on settings -> show more settings -> show more countries and pick the country you want. Which seems like a pain.

Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#52

Post by taftster »

ireadfaces wrote: post #45
taftster wrote: post #23

I think the utility of generic search engines is coming to an end. Services like Google, Bing and DDG are numbered in usefulness. Instead, I am guessing (maybe hoping) that we see a return of the moderated directories, like Yahoo or DMOZ of old. A 2.0 spin on these directories, with lessons learned from all the years. Imagine that you just go to StackOverflow and search there directly for your answer. Want a funny la…

I tried that, but I try to search in wide world, sometimes about topics that I don't even understand. So I don't know where to look. And many of my searches are like that (examples: how merchant fees work, how QC affects stock prices, effects of vitamin D3, how price parity is determined, how to focus on something boring) All these are varied terms and most of search results will be like that, so I wonder if moderate…

I hear you. But arguably, imagine you could search a "collection" after you drilled down into your category.

  Top -> Finance -> Credit Card -> Merchant Fees + Search
  Top -> Finance -> Stock Market -> Algorithms + Search
  Top -> Health -> Vitamins + Search
And of course, the Wikipedia is a good jumping off point for all of that information. But imagine a wikipedia-like place that then allowed you to find the top level information that you're looking for with additional search capabilities in its supporting collection.

Maybe the start of this is taking a Wikipedia article on Price Parity and then enumerating the referenced articles in the footnotes and putting a search engine over those perhaps.

I don't know. But there's got to be something better than what we have right now. I feel another leap of search innovation happening soon.

Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#54

Post by twobitshifter »

taftster wrote: post #23

I think the utility of generic search engines is coming to an end. Services like Google, Bing and DDG are numbered in usefulness. Instead, I am guessing (maybe hoping) that we see a return of the moderated directories, like Yahoo or DMOZ of old. A 2.0 spin on these directories, with lessons learned from all the years. Imagine that you just go to StackOverflow and search there directly for your answer. Want a funny la…

How many of your searches lead directly to Wikipedia or stackoverflow or GitHub. Often we know where we should go but the default search engine in the address bar leads us through a Google intermediary. I myself use keyword searches to go directly to sites, but I doubt that is very common.

Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#56

Post by taftster »

kyrra wrote: post #50
l0b0 wrote: post #16

It's a trend I've noticed with other services, notably Drive and Calendar - they no longer innovate, just get a UI tweak every few years. It's very reminiscent of cash cows, which typically are resourced to just keep going at minimal expense for as long as possible. Another possibility is that the product isn't "sexy" anymore, so they are having trouble finding the great staff they need to stay at the forefront. This…

Googler, opinions are my own. For products that are core, large UI changes tend to just annoy a lot of users, unless there's something really amazing about the change. Even then, people are hesitant to like new UIs. Engineers and designers definitely want to try new things, but balancing those against messing with UIs that a billion+ people use is hard. My general take on drive and calendar, if they are trying to imp…

It's not "large" UI changes that are needed. (I mean, they are needed, the current google UI for most of their products sucks).

But it's small improvements that make the big difference. A small user interface element added or removed to speed up an interaction. An updated user experience so that data can be found or organized in a slightly different way.

I could pick on almost everyone of Google's products and have gripes about some UI or UX choice. Missing functionality here, overly complex there, etc. Every product has obvious low hanging fruit that could be improved.

That's what parent is referring to (I assume). There's no more micro-innovation happening. If it's not a change that makes 100 bazallion dollars, then it's just not a change worth doing, apparently.

Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#58

Post by anonymousiam »

Blame the site operators. They probably have specifically allowed the search engine web crawlers to index their sites, while paywalling everybody else.

One possible solution would be for you to use the same user-agent string that the search engines are using, thus you will see the same content.

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/...

Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#59

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

l0b0 wrote: post #16

It's a trend I've noticed with other services, notably Drive and Calendar - they no longer innovate, just get a UI tweak every few years. It's very reminiscent of cash cows, which typically are resourced to just keep going at minimal expense for as long as possible. Another possibility is that the product isn't "sexy" anymore, so they are having trouble finding the great staff they need to stay at the forefront. This…

Please. No.

The stuff just works.

From the experience of having several critical business SaaS tools go thru constant UX changes that disrespect the user and make the product less stable, I'm actually glad Google still have some respect for the user.

That's why i will gladly buy gsuite for the businesses i provide advice to, yet actively considering replacements of core business infra of which im a power user....for several years.

Its hard to keep something running with no bugs, or downtime.

Its even harder to change something, and keep it bug free, and with no downtime.

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