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Google Memory Loss

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Re: Google Memory Loss

#311

Post by gaius »

kakarot wrote: post #251
gaius wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m on an iPhone now but in many ways it’s a step backwards from my old BlackBerry Pearl, let alone the Bold I got next

Re: Google Memory Loss

#312

Post by dx034 »

mattowen_uk wrote: post #256
mirimir wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be fair, >90% searching for "furce" probably meant force. For the rest it's one click more.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#313

Post by dx034 »

gaius wrote: post #225
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…

very superficial information, will try to rewrite your queries and omit words (including the very word that makes all the difference --- I didn't put it in the search query for nothing!) This is the algorithm deciding that it’s way results in more ad revenue for Google. What do you do? You repeat the query again and they show you a second lot of ads. But let’s be honest if Google could show you as many ads without re…

I believe it's not that direct. It's optimising for what most people search for and how to keep them using Google most. That in turn leads to more ad revenue.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#314

Post by dx034 »

mcguire wrote: post #199
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…

Aren't DDG and Yahoo using Bing?

DDG is now also using Yandex. Not sure which one is better though, I find complex queries still better answered at google (luckily that's quick via !g)

Re: Google Memory Loss

#315

Post by iamdave »

gaius wrote: post #311
kakarot wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m on an iPhone now but in many ways it’s a step backwards from my old BlackBerry Pearl, let alone the Bold I got next

Call me a crazy person, lately I've been thinking long and hard about going back to the BB (BB Bold 9930) and am willing to make all the sacrifices that come with it for a lot of the frustrations with smartphone OSes listed in this thread. Maybe I'm getting older and my demands on what I expect from a phone are beginning to normalize and simplify: Text, Calls, Email, a browser for sports scores and reading news articles on the train.

Honestly it's very probable that I'll only ever keep a smart phone around as a music/podcast/audiobook device.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#316

Post by dandare »

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…

Startup idea: a service that will let you search your inbox. Aka google for searching.

Seriously, this is egregious. You rely on your email provider to accurately search your inbox - some emails are important business, tax, and legal documents that are relevant for years, even decades. Or at least be fucking transparent about the fact that you are not really searching all emails. I know Gmail is a free service and in the T&C you agreed to (figuratively) sell your soul but this has huge real-life implications.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#317

Post by [deleted] »

Houshalter wrote: post #193

Google drank too much of their own koolaid. They were always seen as an "AI company", but they really weren't. As late as 2008, Google's head of AI said they used very little machine learning in search. And actually tried to avoid using it as much as possible. Because they found it very unreliable and it gave weird an unpredictable edge cases. Everything was painstakingly hand engineered. But now we are at peak AI hy…

[deleted]

Re: Google Memory Loss

#318

Post by dx034 »

bambax wrote: post #294
l33tbro wrote: post #265

While we're all grumbling about Google, my main gripe is the increasing indexing of Pinterest in web search. It was bad enough a few years ago when they statted clogging up image searches, but I've noticed a lot of links to Pinterest now in the first few web results of a search.

Concurred. Pinterest is really bad. You need to create an account to do anything with it. Now I have to add -site:pinterest.com to most of my image searches.

The problem with many search algorithms appears to be that you profit massively if your content is on a highly ranked domain. Pinterest is very highly ranked so all content automatically also is assumed to be of high quality.

The same content hosted on another domain would appear much lower on Google than a Pinterest post (or a post on any other large website). Not sure if that's really the best approach but I guess it's not easy coming up with a better one.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#319

Post by endless1234 »

gonvaled wrote: post #293
colordrops wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This same AI effect can be seen in the Android keyboard, where _properly_ spelled words will be replaced after typing another word or two because it's been determined to be more likely what you want. It's infuriating.

Try switching between languages. I work in English, my wife is Italian, my colleagues are french speaking, I am Spanish and have Catalan friends, and I live in Germany. I gave up on predictive keyboards long ago.

SwiftKey seems to manage three languages (Finnish, Swedish, English) simultaneously pretty well. No need to explicitly switch language either, it figures out the current language as you type.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#320

Post by emmelaich »

Radim wrote: post #280
ShabbosGoy wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 suspect the cause is a little more subtle (and terrifying). The majority of people don't give a shit. Correct spelling and obscure searches are not even on their radar, it's not a part of their reality. Don't let the comments here fool you -- it is a very specific, picky, technical crowd that frequents HN. The voice of "those who care" has always been a minority, although it used to matter more, simply because peop…

Yes, this the real reason. It's a variation on the Tyranny of the Majority.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

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