Time for duck duck go
Every Google result now looks like an ad
681–690 of 1001 posts
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#682Reminder that almost every Google search bashing thread on HN is most probably injected by DDG. They have been doing that for years and years and it proved to be very effective. It's a amazing that such a mediocre search engine like DDG can be popular only based on rants and accusations on the big guy. But it seems really to be a very effective marketing technique.
It breaks the site guidelines to post insinuations of astroturfing like this. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here.
Reams of previous explanation at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... if anyone wants it.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#683Earlier quoted context omitted.
Releasing hundreds of open-source tools and donating protocols to standards bodies is really not what I would consider evil. The web is a thousand times better now than it was ten years ago. And despite the frequent misinformation, "Don't be evil" has never once left their code of conduct.
Were you even born 10 years ago? I'm assuming not if that is what you actually believe. I couldn't disagree more.
Personal attacks aren't ok on HN. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#684Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience, Wikipedia has been relegated lower and lower in search results. So much so that I now specifically use their search tool rather than go through google just in case some interesting thing pops up.
Wikipedia seeming to lose relevance is like my old high school teachers finally getting their way over a decade later... Do you find their search tool more effective than appending "wikipedia" to your Google search?
I think it's Google's work to deprioritize them on other search engines it is still showing up at first DDG gives it special treatment, by highlighting its summary, which is often what I'm looking for.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#685Others have mentioned that this is almost certainly the result of a long course of A/B testing. The problem with this kind of aggressive A/B testing is that it's a game of "how far can we push the user?" So instead of having enthusiastic fans, they have people who begrudgingly use them. Sure, Google picks up an extra nickel here or there, and I'm sure some PMs got a raise. But I don't know any strong Google boosters…
Bing results still look like Google's used to, and although its index is smaller, that is slightly less important when Google seems to try its hardest to avoid showing you what you actually searched for. I've been using it more as a result, and also occasionally DDG and Yahoo; whereas for a long time my searches were exclusively on Google, now I find myself using other search engines because of the lack of quality of…
With nearly every browser supporting multiple search engines, and keywords, there's just no reason to exclusively use a single search engine anymore. You can have your browser's address bar search duckduckgo just by using a keyword like "DDG:" (or something even shorter D:) and then typing in your query. Same goes for other engines, or even super niche searches on any website. Makes workflow much easier too, instead of going from Bing/Google/DDG -> StackOverflow, set up a keyword for SO directly. Of course, if the website's search method is mediocre then you're SOL but that's more and more rare these days.
If Bing's results aren't good, head back to the address bar and use another engine, if that's not good try another. So easy nowadays that it's kind of insane to me that there's still so many people who aggressively will ONLY use Google Search.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#686Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be honest I’m not sure what everyone else is searching for on Google the search engine anymore. I personally use it as a Wikipedia search engine in 90% of the cases while 9% is for stackoverflow queries, other than that I get all the info I’m interested in from dedicated FB groups and different sub-reddits. And I’m also a 40-year old guy, from what I can see at people younger than me they spend almost all their we…
You might like DuckDuckGo and “bangs”. https://duckduckgo.com/bang
For anyone reading this thinking "what a killer feature I need to switch to DDG now". All browsers do this natively now. In Chromium engines it's found under "Manage Search Engine". In Firefox it's under "One Click Search Engine".
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#687A little while back I started experimenting with changing the user agent string and found that there are actually many different variations of Google’s search UI that are currently accessible. For example, I was surprised to find that by setting the user agent string to Netscape Navigator 4, I could get a lightweight, no-JS version of Google that looked like it was from the early 2000’s. By using a user agent string…
Your post got me excited, sadly it doesnt work :( I installed "User-Agent Switcher for Chrome" and played with strings from this extension. Even verified in dev console "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)" was being send, cookies/localstorage deleted. At best what I was able to get is "Second Alternate Mobile UI". I was really hoping for "Last-gen, Black Bar", but it seems unattainable :(
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#688Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's absolutely extortion, but it's cheaper for Expedia to buy than a competitor due to Google's auction rules. Essentially, the bid to be #1 is discounted by the click-through rate. If 90% of people who search "expedia.com" will click an ad for Expedia, and only 10% of people who search "expedia.com" will click an ad for travelsite.com, travelsite.com has to pay 10x what Expedia does to make up for the lost revenue.
Devil's advocate - isn't this a neat way of automatically being anti-incumbent and pro-competition?
It is a tax on customers. Incumbents can generally afford to pay more than upstarts, and of course will just pass that cost on.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#689Earlier quoted context omitted.
I pay five figures a month for my "$domain" ad. It's not cheap by any means, but we're forced to buy, otherwise our competitors steal our traffic.
Similarly with GTLDs. Many companies have to register their own .sucks so someone else doesn't stand a website up there. What a pointless waste of money.
And .sucks is expensive for a TLD. I also hate .co. They're basically a top-level typo-squatter IMO.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#690Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be honest I’m not sure what everyone else is searching for on Google the search engine anymore. I personally use it as a Wikipedia search engine in 90% of the cases while 9% is for stackoverflow queries, other than that I get all the info I’m interested in from dedicated FB groups and different sub-reddits. And I’m also a 40-year old guy, from what I can see at people younger than me they spend almost all their we…
You might like DuckDuckGo and “bangs”. https://duckduckgo.com/bang
you can use keyword searches as native features of chrome and ffx