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Every Google result now looks like an ad

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Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#721

Post by choathedolls »

andolanra wrote: post #709
choathedolls wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

My Firefox install has seven search engines by default in the "one-click search engine" options. By contrast, DuckDuckGo has 13000 bang shortcuts. Sure, you don't need all of them, but I use dozens: some of them almost daily (like !w for Wikipedia and !wt for Wiktionary), some sporadically (like !tw for Twitter or !a for Amazon) and some of them only rarely (e.g. I picked up a Pokémon game recently and consequently h…

Firefox is a little lacking in that department. Chromium based browsers on the other hand, anytime a search is used on a page, that gets added to the list in your browser's options.

For example, just used HN's search bar, and there it showed up in the options ready to customise keywords to my liking (if I wanted to change it).

Before anybody claims it's an additional step, it's not. DDG requires you to know what the keyword is before you use it, which is the same as having to use the search on the site before. So I guess I agree it's a killer feature if you exclusively use Firefox for the time being.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#722

Post by 40four »

sefrost wrote: post #557
40four wrote: post #487

Good thing I stoped using google search last year :) Actually I’ve stopping using google for EVERYTHING, except one old legacy throwaway gmail account. I must say, it feels really good!

What do you use instead of Google Maps?

Oh yeah, you got me, I forgot about that! Heh, well I do still use Google maps & Waze. So there’s that. For what it’s worth I use maps without logging in.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#723

Post by Terretta »

apl002 wrote: post #719
SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I posted the solution below, Sorry to be "that guy" but for me the solution is to use DuckDuckGo. It's not perfect, but neither is trying to play arms race with Google's JavaScript.

I use DDG as much as I can but when I need to find something very specific, or find a solution to a bug Ive encountered, it takes 2x as long on DDG vs Google

On DDG, type:

    !s your search terms

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#724

Post by SquishyPanda23 »

apl002 wrote: post #719
SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I posted the solution below, Sorry to be "that guy" but for me the solution is to use DuckDuckGo. It's not perfect, but neither is trying to play arms race with Google's JavaScript.

I use DDG as much as I can but when I need to find something very specific, or find a solution to a bug Ive encountered, it takes 2x as long on DDG vs Google

Just to be clear, I still use !g pretty frequently.

But psychologically it's rather different. If you find the Google search page to be visually aversive then your goal is to get in and get out quickly. That's a bit harder if Google is your default search.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#725

Post by thedailymail »

pushcx wrote: post #29

https://www.google.com/about/honestresults/ It's a little confusing to read now, so for context: at the time Google published this, it only put ads in the sidebar to the right of search results. This post was written to criticize the practice of putting ads atop search results, which competitors sometimes formatted almost indistinguishably from organic search results.

This bit from the 1998 paper by young researchers Brin and Page, in which they introduce a novel search engine called 'google,' is also fun and instructive:

"It is clear that a search engine which was taking money for showing cellular phone ads would have difficulty justifying the page that our system returned to its paying advertisers. For this type of reason and historical experience with other media [Bagdikian 83], we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers."

http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#726

Post by microcolonel »

amatecha wrote: post #449
ronilan wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your link is gold. A historic artifact. Amazing how clear the writing is, how simple the message. That’s, like, totally not the corpspeak Goog emits now on a daily basis. So, let’s do some digging. Earliest version of url dates back 4+ years. https://web.archive.org/web/20151213182805/https://www.googl... Things were a little better than, but not by much. This has to be earlier. Ah, here is: https://books.google.ca/b…

Excellent sleuthing -- makes sense that the message is so old. There's no way they would produce something like this today.

They'll fire all the people who made them this way, and get back to that, if they want to survive the next decade at their scale.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#727

Post by hiram112 »

userbinator wrote: post #656
catalogia wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "the solution" That's a solution, but not a particularly great one since it requires too much from the user to see mass adoption.

That still requires somewhat less from the user than my solution: a filtering proxy. On the other hand, the latter enables a far more customised browsing experience and one that isn't restricted to a single browser on a single computer. ...which brings me to another great point this illustrates: if you want to customise your experience, if you want to be able to control how you see the Web, then you need to make an e…

What kind of filtering proxy are you using?

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#728

Post by bemmu »

umvi wrote: post #635
ogre_codes wrote: post #223

It's been clear for a little while that Google no longer cares about giving the best experience with a lot of their tools and is just focused on maximizing revenue. More and more, Google is the modern equivalent of Microsoft in the early 00s, still good enough that most people use it, but each successive "version" piles on more frustrations than benefits. It's so ironic that Google has become that which they most des…

Your fate is sealed the moment you go public. No public company can withstand the shareholder pressure forever

What would happen if they threw their hands up, declared that OK this is as much revenue we can squeeze out, and instead just coasted at current levels?
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