Why I’m done with Chrome • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#781

Post by unethical_ban » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 3:34 PM UTC

vetinari wrote: post #670

dijit wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Apple is so locked down that I essentially have to use their services I want to touch on this because in my experience this is less true than it seems on the surface. The contacts app and calendar app support carddav/caldav respectively- photos use the standard camera interface (mpd?) the things that suck are that you need to use Xcode to develop for it, and you need iTunes to put music on the default music player a…

You don't have to use Google services with Android either. For years I've used an Android phone with no Google account attached - I simply skipped the OOB assistant and then created an account pointing on my company's Exchange, where all my mail/calendaring/contacts were. For maps, I used Sygic, which you can purchase outside Play Store. Yes, I did lose Google Play, Youtube, Hangouts, but exactly that was the intent…

F-Droid prompts me every day about app updates, even when there are none (it seems) and even when I've said not to give me notifications like that.

Had to uninstall DNS66 and F-Droid because of it.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#782

Post by wool_gather » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 3:37 PM UTC

jMyles wrote: post #738

rovr138 wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title and domain is not the only thing that matter for Google’s ranking.

Right - of course. So the question is: are the other "things that matter" designed to: 1) Inform the user and help the user quickly find facts, narratives, and meaningful content related to the search phrase? 2) Sell things? 3) Promote modes of political control by narrowing the scope of acceptable thought and connection between search phrase and content? We all hope for #1. We all accept #2. But I think that most of…

The two articles at issue here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms (redirect from "Gun rights") and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_control definitely put a different complexion on the subject -- or at least very closely related subjects -- and it seems like someone searching for "Gun rights" would probably be better served by being shown the first article.

So I think you're right to be skeptical here. On the other hand, after a scan of each, I see two plausible reasons that the "Gun control" article might be elevated.

One, it's somewhat longer, with more references and cross-links (it even has a "See also" link to the "Gun rights" article).

Two, superficially, the "Gun control" article is a bit more internationally focused. The title of the "Gun rights" article is straight out of the U.S. Constitution. The appearance doesn't really hold up under scrutiny -- they both spend similar shares of their content on U.S. stuff -- but it might make a small difference.

Regardless of the reason, it's definitely good to pay attention to this sort of thing.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#783

Post by unethical_ban » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 3:37 PM UTC

wardrobe wrote: post #774

brian-armstrong wrote: post #10

Firefox is a truly fantastic browser now. I've been using it again for about 2 years and haven't regretted it at all. There have been a couple of weird feature hiccups but generally Mozilla seems to get things right.

Biggest drawback to me after trying Firefox are the lack of simple profiles, as in Chrome, which let me separate work from personal from school when browsing, and the fact that all web development is done for Chrome. So many sites don't work correctly in Firefox that I eventually had to give up on it and move back.

Container tabs can do that from a isolation perspective, though bookmarks will be shared. I have "banking", "google services", "facebook", and the default for other stuff.

>So many sites don't work correctly in Firefox

I've not experienced that.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#784

Post by unethical_ban » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 3:39 PM UTC

atombender wrote: post #420

hcs wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Container tabs are a similarly interesting idea with a weird implementation that requires you to micromanage your tabs, which I certainly don't want to You might want to take a look at the Firefox Multi-Account Containers Add-on, it lets you set domains to always open in a given container, which cuts down on the micromanagement a lot once you get it "trained". [edit: This is not well-advertised, it's accessed throu…

I still think that "container tabs" shouldn't need to exist. They fail the "grandma test", for one.

They're working on native first party isolation, but it breaks authentication via Facebook/Google/other OAuth vendors.

It's a tough problem, and I agree the grandma test is a good standard, sometimes it can't be easily done.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#785

Post by atombender » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 3:39 PM UTC

Manishearth wrote: post #718

atombender wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish Firefox was as sleek, fast and no-nonsense as Safari on the Mac, which is my everyday browser. I vastly prefer the idea of an open browser that is not tightly coupled to a particular industry giant. And I wish Firefox actually had a viable Safari competitor on iOS, so that I can sync my state around. Unfortunately, while Firefox has made significant leaps the last couple of years, it's still not a viable alter…

You probably have search suggestions in firefox turned off (they may be off by default?). Works for me when I flip it on https://i.stack.imgur.com/0ZfvX.png . I keep it off because I don't like having my every keystroke in the address bar sent to Google.

No, I don't. You and other commenters are clearly unfamiliar with what Safari can do. I collected a few examples:

https://imgur.com/a/dY2SWKB

Firefox only does search suggestions. In other words, anything you select from the suggestions just go to search results. Safari does that, too, but it also provides actual results. Very often the top hit is the right thing.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#786

Post by lolc » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 3:44 PM UTC

llampx wrote: post #739

sct202 wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And right under that there is a suggested link for "Right to keep and bear arms." What is most likely happening is that the Gun Control page is more popular than the Right to keep and bear arms page, so the algo picked that one for the single card that they load. IDK what they use for ranking, but I would imagine that the fact that 'gun' appears in the title of one and not the other is impacting the matching and also…

You don't seriously believe that, do you? Google has an agenda. They don't hire lobbyists on K street to fight for more neutral search results.

Having the word "gun" in the title explains why the "gun control" page is listed first. Positing Google does it because they have an agenda besides showing relevant results fails the law of parsimony here.

Please explain how Google implements its agenda into the search results people see before mocking other people's statements.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#787

Post by antsar » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 3:50 PM UTC

llampx wrote: post #739

sct202 wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And right under that there is a suggested link for "Right to keep and bear arms." What is most likely happening is that the Gun Control page is more popular than the Right to keep and bear arms page, so the algo picked that one for the single card that they load. IDK what they use for ranking, but I would imagine that the fact that 'gun' appears in the title of one and not the other is impacting the matching and also…

You don't seriously believe that, do you? Google has an agenda. They don't hire lobbyists on K street to fight for more neutral search results.

Can't both be true?

• "Google has an agenda. They don't hire lobbyists on K street to fight for more neutral search results."

• In this case, "the fact that 'gun' appears in the title of one and not the other is impacting the matching and also the Gun Control page is much longer so it probably seems like a higher quality page versus the other one"

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#788

Post by 24gttghh » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 3:53 PM UTC

Lazare wrote: post #480

brandonjm wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Search for "gun rights" in Google, and the Wikipedia feature box on the top-right of the results page is the Gun Control article. That could have a very simple explanation: There is no Wikipedia page for "Gun Rights". There is however a Wikipedia page for "Right to Keep and Bear Arms" which is exactly what appears in the Wikipedia box on the right or as the first Wikipedia article when you search for "right to bear…

> That could have a very simple explanation: There is no Wikipedia page for "Gun Rights". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_rights is a valid link, and seems like the obvious wikipedia page to deem relevant for that phrase. And Bing gets it right. I have no reason to think it's some dark conspiracy, but it's certainly a pretty silly failure of their vaunted algorithms. Are there a lot of searches for common phrases w…

It's actually a redirect to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms ...

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#789

Post by ehnto » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 3:55 PM UTC

garyclarke27 wrote: post #587

ehnto wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I could define it as intentional and nefarious but I definitely find Google search results to be markedly worse over the last few years. It used to be really competent at finding specialist/technical results but lately it's gotten more generic and less useful. It's possible that's actually the nature of content creation these days, with everyone hyper optimising to please the Google search algorithm. But…

Agreed - Particularly infuriating, is Google’s habit of returning search results with many missing terms, implying that they know whats best for me- ignoring a large part of my precisly crafted search input. I know there is Verbatim option, but this is another slow step and does not work in combination with valuable time filter. Wish there was an option to always use Verbatim and more default time filters such as 3 m…

Absolutely. That is one of my biggest pet peeves. There must be a threshold where it would rather give you well ranked but worse matching results over low-ranked but well matching results. That threshold seems to be too low hence the generic garbage results for really specific terms.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#790

Post by ehnto » Mon, Sep 24, 2018, 4:00 PM UTC

apatters wrote: post #643

ehnto wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I could define it as intentional and nefarious but I definitely find Google search results to be markedly worse over the last few years. It used to be really competent at finding specialist/technical results but lately it's gotten more generic and less useful. It's possible that's actually the nature of content creation these days, with everyone hyper optimising to please the Google search algorithm. But…

I believe a major reason for the widely observed decline in Google's SERP quality is that SEOs got too good at gaming the system. The Panda and Penguin updates a few years ago kicked off a trend of prioritizing content from highly authoritative domains (e.g. big brands) even when that content is less relevant to your search query. Google has been doubling down on this direction progressively--their justification bein…

I can definitely see that being part of the issue. Having been a dev in the boiler room for a few heavy SEO reliant domains, it was remarkable the kind of low quality articles people would spin and Google would eat up, especially before Penguin and Panda. The blame can't all be put on Google, the SEO industry is a dirty place that consistently pushed out small producers of genuine content in order to make a buck.