On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results • Hacker News Board

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#11

Post by PaulHoule » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 5:19 PM UTC

bonniemuffin wrote: post #6

PaulHoule wrote: post #3

One of the worst things is that they are removing Wikipedia from the "Knowledge Graph" results and generally replacing it with stuff inferior.

Any speculation on why they'd want to do this? It seems clearly better for the consumer if wikipedia shows up at the top anytime you google a word/phrase that appears in wikipedia. Do they make money on the results that are showing up higher?

Not necessarily.

One of the reasons why Google has looked so smart is that it has leaned on Wikipedia. I have a kid in middle school and definitely one thing you learn there is you can look like an expert on any subject by consulting Wikipedia (i.e. "what calibre ammunition is used by a tommy gun?") To an extent teachers encourage it, but it can tend towards plagiarism.

The Wikipedia page is generally a safe bet for relevance but it may or may not be a quality answer.

I think today they may be like the middle school student who is learning the tricks to not look like a plagiarist.

Remember that Google search and advertising is actually in big trouble -- there is a reason why they renamed the company to Alphabet. The 90%+ market share they have in many countries is unsustainable for many cultural reasons and they have to diversify.

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#12

Post by PaulHoule » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 5:19 PM UTC

bonniemuffin wrote: post #6

PaulHoule wrote: post #3

One of the worst things is that they are removing Wikipedia from the "Knowledge Graph" results and generally replacing it with stuff inferior.

Any speculation on why they'd want to do this? It seems clearly better for the consumer if wikipedia shows up at the top anytime you google a word/phrase that appears in wikipedia. Do they make money on the results that are showing up higher?

Not necessarily.

One of the reasons why Google has looked so smart is that it has leaned on Wikipedia. I have a kid in middle school and definitely one thing you learn there is you can look like an expert on any subject by consulting Wikipedia (i.e. "what calibre ammunition is used by a tommy gun?") To an extent teachers encourage it, but it can tend towards plagiarism.

The Wikipedia page is generally a safe bet for relevance but it may or may not be a quality answer.

I think today they may be like the middle school student who is learning the tricks to not look like a plagiarist.

Remember that Google search and advertising is actually in big trouble -- there is a reason why they renamed the company to Alphabet. The 90%+ market share they have in many countries is unsustainable for many cultural reasons and they have to diversify.

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#13

Post by Houshalter » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 5:23 PM UTC

bonniemuffin wrote: post #6

PaulHoule wrote: post #3

One of the worst things is that they are removing Wikipedia from the "Knowledge Graph" results and generally replacing it with stuff inferior.

Any speculation on why they'd want to do this? It seems clearly better for the consumer if wikipedia shows up at the top anytime you google a word/phrase that appears in wikipedia. Do they make money on the results that are showing up higher?

Since you asked for speculation: Wikipedia is not very well written for someone just asking a quick question to Google. Articles are overly long, and written in a boring and neutral tone.

If someone just wants to know where birds go when it rains, an article on bird habits is less relevant to them than an article that directly answers that question.

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#14

Post by BlackFly » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 5:24 PM UTC

superskierpat wrote: post #4

herbst wrote: post #2

A friend had to chance his product name, because Google wouldnt stop suggesting porn. You googled his product and instead you found porn. It was not really related, and the term was as innocent as possible in it self, but well google thought and still thinks you want porn.

Duckduckgo has a safe filter that blocks porn and a few other things from showing up in the search results that works pretty well, you can decide to take it off at any time too. They have the same kind of filter for looking for country specific results.

And their localized search is the epitome of what localization should be. A small always present toggle takes me immediately from globally most popular results to results local to my area, which truth be told I only ever want when I look up something like "legally protected mushrooms". Meanwhile, I typed google.com in the address bar, why does it insist on redirecting me to google.nl?

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#15

Post by herbst » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 5:25 PM UTC

saurik wrote: post #9

superskierpat wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Duckduckgo has a safe filter that blocks porn and a few other things from showing up in the search results that works pretty well, you can decide to take it off at any time too. They have the same kind of filter for looking for country specific results.

So you are saying that friend should go on a campaign to convince all of that product's potential users to not use Google and use DuckDuck ago instead?

I dont get it ether. Seems like a brutal way to keep his old name.

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#16

Post by vonklaus » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 5:34 PM UTC

I will not beleagure this point again, I make it everyday on deaf ears.

* Search can never be decoupled from the browser.

* search is worse and discovery is hard.

* Brave Software needs to focus on building security by design which means a search engine AND browser.

The memex-explorer model is the design of the google killer. Likely why it was abandoned.

Browser wars began ~6 months ago.

The next larry page & brin, WILL write a search engine.

Edit; It is impossible for google to use human language and (questionably respected) boolean operators as the only filtering mechanism For hundreds of billions of pages.

Staggering how well they do with just 1 textbox and image & video tabs, but new players wont have to follow the same roadmap.

============================

Please Explain Downvotes

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I am trying to ascertain how I have been thinking about this incorrectly. Often, downvoted but no one explains why. How am I thinking about this incorrectly, what am I missing?

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#17

Post by dsr_ » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 5:54 PM UTC

vonklaus wrote: post #16

I will not beleagure this point again, I make it everyday on deaf ears. * Search can never be decoupled from the browser. * search is worse and discovery is hard. * Brave Software needs to focus on building security by design which means a search engine AND browser. The memex-explorer model is the design of the google killer. Likely why it was abandoned. Browser wars began ~6 months ago. The next larry page & brin, W…

I would like to know your reasoning as to why search cannot be decoupled from the browser; I would like to know why you think that a browser war began about six months ago.

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#18

Post by robbrown451 » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 5:57 PM UTC

There are lots of problems with Google search results recently, this is one I noticed today:

https://www.google.com/webhp?q=goat#safe=on&q=goat

Yes a crude Urban Dictionary definition was above the Wikipedia definition. Maybe they think they know my sense of humor and pop culture, but I really wanted to learn about actual goats, the animals, because my 2 year old daughter enjoys them so much at the petting zoo. Not about how to arrange my junk in a particular way.

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#19

Post by theseatoms » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 6:05 PM UTC

stephaniepier wrote: post #10

This happens to me frequently. I've also noticed that sometimes the "Did you mean [this]?" or "Search instead for [this]" don't show up anymore, which can be a big problem. As an example, it's difficult to find information on the company "Amazone" because Google insists on correcting it to Amazon. Usually putting things in quotes fixes it, but it's annoying when I know what I want to search for and Google keeps assum…

I mean... Amazone should probably change their name.

Re: On the growing, intentional uselessness of Google search results

#20

Post by romaniv » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 6:05 PM UTC

Alas, it’s 2016 and there’s still no serious competitor to Google.

And there will not be any time soon. Writing an efficient crawler for what we call the "modern" web is not something a small or even median-size company can pull off. Google enjoys a tremendous competitive advantage: people specifically optimize webpages for what it can and cannot do. So any newcomer to the field will have to replicate tons of technologies Google had years to perfect (in addition to solving problems like storage, search logic and bandwidth management).