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Google are removing URLs entirely from search results?

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Re: Google are removing URLs entirely from search results?

#301

Post by ConceptJunkie »

behnamoh wrote: post #275
blihp wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's the way market economies work. One of your jobs as a consumer is to recognize when your interests and a company's no longer align and be willing to walk.

Of course, but majority of people aren't informed enough about these situations and that has created a negative loop which allows these companies to exploit lack of knowledge on their customers' part in an increasing rate.

Ding Ding Ding! Google is working against their users' interests, and most of them don't realize it, because computers are still magical appliances to 95% of users.

That doesn't mitigate Google's evil, it makes it worse.

Re: Google are removing URLs entirely from search results?

#302

Post by ConceptJunkie »

yyyk wrote: post #98
dessant wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we have any recourse against this monopoly, other than voicing our concerns repeatedly while they ignore us? Can we launch a class action lawsuit against Google if they harm people by limiting consumer choice, and force us to be tracked everywhere using reCAPTCHA v3 and various other methods? Keep in mind that not sending your data to Google is not a real option, there are several government services, health care…

I think that just expressing our opinion, and doing what little we can will have an effect in the long run. Google is far from invincible - it still needs to answer to shareholders, and has (or will get) competitors and legal scrutiny. Eventually, like previous major computer companies, its monopoly will weaken, and it will have to play a bit nicer.

That only works if the shareholders care about Google being ethical, as opposed to caring about maximizing profit. How likely do you think that is to happen? (Genuine question, not being sarcastic)

Re: Google are removing URLs entirely from search results?

#303

Post by ConceptJunkie »

marcosdumay wrote: post #151
jsilence wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would love to switch to DDG, but it consistently gives me search results that do not contain s search term at all, even when I wrap it in double quotes. So they give me thousands of non relevant search results.

It's actually weird to see that in a DDG x Google comparison... But yes, DDG has started giving me results with entire terms removed from the search since recently, and I have to add quotes all the time to get them back. But at least with DDG we have to option of quoting the terms. Google is much worse at this in any way you care to measure.

Yes, I've found this to be the case. Today I was searching for "DVD-RAM" and most of the results from DDG did not contain the term at all, with or without quotes.

Re: Google are removing URLs entirely from search results?

#304

Post by gspetr »

maest wrote: post #278
powersnail wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found that DDG is okay for two types of queries: common everyday topics and technical queries. For many other niche topic, it’s not good at all. I use DDG as the default and have been doing so for many years. I still have to add !g every time I search for violin related questions. The results are often just not relevant at all. I think DDG still has a long way to grow to be a 100% replacement for Google outside the…

Regarding technical queries, they consistently return links to the python 2 docs, never python 3. What I assume people do is they click on the python 2 docs then change the version on the python website. So, from bings perspective it looks like people want the python 2 links. It always frustrates me and makes looking stuff up longer than needed.

There is a very easy workflow remedy for this, if DDG is your default search engine: type "!py [topic]"

For example, I tried searching for "python lists" in my address bar (DDG is my default) and I got all sorts of garbage.

Next, I typed "!py lists" and the browser immediately opened this page for me: https://docs.python.org/3/search.html?q=lists

So that works really nice if what you need is Python's native docs.

But there's more to "bang" syntax usage, now totaling over 13,000 bangs: https://duckduckgo.com/bang#bangs-list

Re: Google are removing URLs entirely from search results?

#305

Post by yyyk »

ConceptJunkie wrote: post #302
yyyk wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that just expressing our opinion, and doing what little we can will have an effect in the long run. Google is far from invincible - it still needs to answer to shareholders, and has (or will get) competitors and legal scrutiny. Eventually, like previous major computer companies, its monopoly will weaken, and it will have to play a bit nicer.

That only works if the shareholders care about Google being ethical, as opposed to caring about maximizing profit. How likely do you think that is to happen? (Genuine question, not being sarcastic)

I do not expect most shareholders to act ethically. If anything, I think their drive for short-term profit is weakening Google far more than what any 'ethical shareholder' could have done or would have wanted to do.

I was arguing that Google/Alphabet is subject to the same forces that brought down the reign of other dominant companies in the software industry like IBM and Microsoft* . Eventually Google's reign will crumble too, and probably for the same reasons.

Our actions, albeit small can push in that direction, just like small actions helped to bring down others. Choosing other computer providers made IBM unable to extend its practices to minicomputers and left them vulnerable to MS. Linux played a role in denying server marketshare to MS. Popular opinion aided the antitrust cases against both MS and IBM - it is not commonly known these days there was a massive antitrust case against IBM which lasted even longer than the MS case.

* Note that both of these companies still exist and are very wealthy. I for one, do not seek to abolish Google - just to limit their ambitions to something that can coexist with others.

Re: Google are removing URLs entirely from search results?

#306

Post by marcoseliziario »

reaperducer wrote: post #204
jacquesm wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why on earth is this comment downvoted?

A fair number of HN users work for said monopoly.

Not sure if is that the case. HN sometimes likes to downvote things randomly, for no discernible reason at all.

Re: Google are removing URLs entirely from search results?

#307

Post by Causality1 »

derp_dee_derp wrote: post #282
maest wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fair to say DDG (i.e. Bing) is clearly worse than Google, which is a real shame. However, it's still usable and you can resort to google when a search query isn't working.

It's not fair to say that at all. DDG has better results than Google for most has cases, and Bing has better results for just under half of use cases.

The one place DDG really falls off is correlating searches with results so they do a worse job than Google at giving you what you want instead of what you search for. That is, trying to remember something and typing along the lines of "that thing with the blue guy and the explosion" is more likely to get you a good result on Google when the actual movie you wanted was "green guy and a fire".

Not a huge performance difference but it's there.

Re: Google are removing URLs entirely from search results?

#308

Post by stockkid »

notus wrote: post #168
yyyk wrote: post #50

This is a purely anti-user move. No user gains anything by it, this actually helps phishing sites. Oh, and it happens to help Google's AMP effort, which can now pretend to be the original site even more effectively. Time to get everyone to use Duck Duck Go, and to get rid of those Google CAPTCHAs which are an even bigger data harvesting operation than search.

Side note: For those who tried DDG in the past and were unimpressed I suggest giving it a whirl again. I kind of wrote it off a few years ago and then tried it recently and its pretty good. You may have to modify some search habits. If you enable location tracking they do anonymous localized results (can read about it here: https://help.duckduckgo.com/privacy/anonymous-localized-resu... ) Usually good if you're used…

You're right, nowadays DDG is really not bad for satisfying everyday web search needs. On the other hand, I cannot help but switch to Google (g! at the end of the query) for anything programming related because Google just finds things that DDG doesn't.

Re: Google are removing URLs entirely from search results?

#309

Post by austhrow743 »

bharam wrote: post #90
austhrow743 wrote: post #68

Left gmail just over a year ago which was the biggest anchor holding me to Google. Appears this was what was needed to get me over to duckduckgo on search. Results have been fine for everything I've searched in the last hour.

What was your process for leaving Google? I'm on Android, have a GMail account and so on. If you want to leave where do you start?

I signed up for a personal domain so I wouldn't have to move addresses ever again and then went with fastmail for email hosting.

Added new email to email clients, set it as the default to send from, then went down my account list in my password manager and swapped the registered email for all of the accounts I care about. Then it was just a year of replying back to people when they emailed me at gmail saying "ps. New email address as you can see"

Nothing complex, just takes time to get the message out there.

Re: Google are removing URLs entirely from search results?

#310

Post by fionnafire »

yyyk wrote: post #50

This is a purely anti-user move. No user gains anything by it, this actually helps phishing sites. Oh, and it happens to help Google's AMP effort, which can now pretend to be the original site even more effectively. Time to get everyone to use Duck Duck Go, and to get rid of those Google CAPTCHAs which are an even bigger data harvesting operation than search.

I really don't understand why everyone is hating on amp, it helps me save data and load pages faster

I also don't really understand what's wrong with data harvesting, if anyone wants to enlighten me, please do

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