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Google Memory Loss

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Re: Google Memory Loss

#251

Post by kakarot »

gaius wrote: post #227
epistasis wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, Android does that too? This awful, terrible, no good fake "AI" behavior on iOS was one of the many quality issues with modern iOS that was making Android look more attractive. iOS keyboards have been getting worse with every update, probably as more and more engineers feel the need to make a mark, or are required to fix bugs, and they spoil it. The simple and predictable statistical model of the original iOS…

On BlackBerry if it autocorrected to something you didn’t want, one press of delete would revert to your original word. iOS makes you a) rekey the whole thing and b) will probably try to change it again . I can only assume that no one (or moons, it literally just tried) who works on this uses it themselves!

I always thought Blackberry had the best autocorrect experience. My old Blackberry would occasionally surprise me by catching something I wouldn't think it would know about, and after some initial tuning never ever frustrated me. It only enhanced my experience.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#252

Post by telltruth »

I'm wondering if rackless Ruth, Google's bean-counter-in-chief, is behind all these. At Bing, bean counters often had calculated that if you cut down index to half (after certain size), you reduce half of the cost but don't lose half of the revenues. So there is a sweet spot where you can maximize revenue if you are willing to let go few demanding customers. When quarterly results needs a little push, everything is a fair game. I bet Sundar Pitchai doesn't want to look bad as "CEO" who can't meet analyst expectations.

I definitely miss old days of Google. After Amit Singhal left, things haven't been same at all. He had resisted unexplainable AI getting in to search features. But as he left, RankBrain had Ai-driven feature that is 3rd most significant. That feature is the reason why you often see pages even if they don't contain keywords and even a phrase you had specified. Those old guard knew that trading explainibility and little bit of revenue with slight decrease in customer sat wasn't worth it.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#253

Post by confounded »

ohazi wrote: post #17

I've convinced myself that this happens in gmail / hangouts history search too. It'll very confidently tell you that here are the only six results for your search term going back to the beginning of time, but if you go and manually dig up something that you know is there from ten years ago, then all of a sudden there are seven results the next time you search for the same term. I haven't done this methodically, and I…

I’ve gone back to using a local client recently, and being able to search/grep text files I know are in a dir has made me feel much less like I’m going insane / dependent upon capricious mystical forces.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#254

Post by Cort3z »

Declanomous wrote: post #101
userbinator wrote: post #93

I've noticed this many times too, particularly recently, and I call it "Google Alzheimer's" --- what was once a very powerful search engine that could give you thousands (yes, I've tried exhausting its result pages many times, and used to have much success finding the perfect site many dozens of pages deep in the results) of pages containing nothing but the exact words and phrase you search for has seemingly degraded…

> has seemingly degraded into an approximation of a search engine that has knowledge of only very superficial information, will try to rewrite your queries and omit words (including the very word that makes all the difference...) I think the biggest irony is that the web allows for more adoption of long-tail movements than ever before, and Google has gotten significantly worse at turning these up. I assume this has s…

You can add a plus (+) before a word you require to be in the search results. Eg. "+VBS array loop". You can filter out word by prepending a minus (-). You can surround exact phrases in quotes (") and you can even allow synonyms by prepending a tilde "~"

Example query: +vbs array ~loop "magic number"

If Google does not find anything it will remove some parts so that you will get any results at all

Re: Google Memory Loss

#255

Post by therein »

cma wrote: post #217
Baeocystin wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that when the + command was overridden in search to refer to G+ instead of 'this is a mandatory search item'? I am still shocked they ever thought that was a good idea, or that surrounding quotes was an acceptable replacement.

No, when that was changed you could at that time just quote a single word to get the old +word behavior.

Years ago when I interviewed for a Software Engineer position at Google, the person I was matched to eat lunch with between the interviews was from the Search team.

I asked him these exact questions. He said, the last time he checked, quoting a single word to mark it mandatory worked for him and that he definitely would know if it didn't.

I didn't insist much at the time but I knew he didn't know what he was talking about, and it made me lose hope that this feature would ever come back working like it used to.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#256

Post by mattowen_uk »

mirimir wrote: post #237
chx wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! You need to beat Google with a stick to enable searching for the furce awakens (that's not a typo) poster which Disney itself produced. Used to be that quotes around a phrase stopped this typo correcting but no longer. BTW. this is my go-to example for the "piracy is a service problem" -- this is 100% Disney IP for the fans of two billion dollar movies and you can't buy it as a poster. https://images.moviepilot.…

Huh? I just searched for "the furce awakens". And got: Showing results for "the force awakens" Search instead for "the furce awakens" And hitting that got me the Zootopia stuff. So?

CHX is still right in what they say. The point here is that Google override peoples searches based on some random fuzzy logic, and whatever you've searched before, regardless of whether you are logged in or not.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#257

Post by haraldooo »

Cort3z wrote: post #254
Declanomous wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> has seemingly degraded into an approximation of a search engine that has knowledge of only very superficial information, will try to rewrite your queries and omit words (including the very word that makes all the difference...) I think the biggest irony is that the web allows for more adoption of long-tail movements than ever before, and Google has gotten significantly worse at turning these up. I assume this has s…

You can add a plus (+) before a word you require to be in the search results. Eg. "+VBS array loop". You can filter out word by prepending a minus (-). You can surround exact phrases in quotes (") and you can even allow synonyms by prepending a tilde "~" Example query: +vbs array ~loop "magic number" If Google does not find anything it will remove some parts so that you will get any results at all

Didn‘t they drop the + operator when they launched Google+? I thought now you have to surround your term with „“ instead of +?

Re: Google Memory Loss

#258

Post by gboudrias »

ShabbosGoy wrote: post #216
epistasis wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, Android does that too? This awful, terrible, no good fake "AI" behavior on iOS was one of the many quality issues with modern iOS that was making Android look more attractive. iOS keyboards have been getting worse with every update, probably as more and more engineers feel the need to make a mark, or are required to fix bugs, and they spoil it. The simple and predictable statistical model of the original iOS…

4 years ago was a very different time. Software quality in general continues to drop. I’m not sure if that’s due to increasing incompetence in the software engineering workforce (unlikely, but possible), malice (more unlikely), or apathy (most likely). When wages don’t grow over 10 years, what incentive is there to write the best software you can?

I find it more reasonable to assume that you can only improve a very specific function so much before your "improvements" turn to "pointless sidegrades".

Re: Google Memory Loss

#259

Post by nbsd4lyfe »

userbinator wrote: post #93

I've noticed this many times too, particularly recently, and I call it "Google Alzheimer's" --- what was once a very powerful search engine that could give you thousands (yes, I've tried exhausting its result pages many times, and used to have much success finding the perfect site many dozens of pages deep in the results) of pages containing nothing but the exact words and phrase you search for has seemingly degraded…

Those captchas are the worst. Google asks me to answer one whenever I make search queries in the middle of the night.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#260

Post by kuschku »

peterwwillis wrote: post #173

It's going to be a little sad when Google Maps goes away. It will be much more sad when Google Flights goes away. But I can't think of anything else Google provides that I couldn't get from a bunch of competitors. Well... maybe Google Translate.

In many places I've found both OSM and Here maps to provide higher quality data than Google Maps, actually. So it won't be that bad when (not if, considering it's Google) they stop Google Maps. And DeepL is starting to beat Google Translate on some language pairs, too.

The hardest to replace part is search today.

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