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How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

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Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#151

Post by jborichevskiy »

winternett wrote: post #144
jborichevskiy wrote: post #13

> Recode’s Peter Kafka recently interviewed Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti, and Peretti said something really insightful: what if Google’s ads really aren’t that good? What if Google is just taking credit for clicks on ads just because people would have been searching for that stuff anyway? I’ve been thinking about it all day: what if Google ads actually aren’t that effective and the only reason they make so much is bill…

I have a feeling that we'll arrive soon at StatGate... The point where we find that many companies have been providing erroneous and/or outright false web stats, recommendations, reviews and other metrics to users in order to steer and increase profit. Social media sites offer the ability for everyone on platforms to pay for primary placement now. This is a big conflict of interest in how posts are shown to users, an…

I suspect the same. And it wouldn't be unprecedented:

WSJ: Facebook Overestimated Key Video Metric for Two Years (2016)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-overestimated-key-vide...

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#152

Post by nyrosis »

scarejunba wrote: post #111
titzer wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After all this time watchin me, everything I ever asked it, all the ads I never clicked on, all the videos it watched me watch, all my emails it read, heck even after I worked for the dang company for nearly ten years, Google does not understand a very basic, essential thing about me. I hate advertising, damn it! I am sick of looking at it, I am sick of it looking at me. I am sick of hearing about how advertising is…

You don't need Google. The Internet is fairly decentralized. You can build your small web even today and just block Google via robots.txt, never use it yourself, and link via webrings. The Internet is very good at overlay networks. Search engines aren't even required. If you want Google's features then they ask that you pay their price. But if you don't want to play with the rest of us, you can host on your own, you…

YaCy certainly comes to mind when considering decentralized web search. Google has a strong control of the pipe of people sending it queries. Though, there are certainly other methods.

https://yacy.net/index.html

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#153

Post by StanislavPetrov »

ogre_codes wrote: post #19

I have to disagree fundamentally with the author on this point: > but then Google was always ugly until relatively recently Google was originally and for many years extremely elegant in it’s simplicity. There is nothing ugly about getting people exactly what they need instantly. As for the main thrust of the article, I’ve already found Google’s results mostly untrustworthy. For some time search results have been so d…

>Google was originally and for many years extremely elegant in it’s simplicity.

The reason I started using Google (and made it my home page) over 20 years ago wasn't because of the quality of their searches, but because their home page was a plain white page that loaded instantly (in contrast to Alta Vista and other search engines that were loaded down with all sorts of animations and advertisements that took forever to load). Even after I got broadband I stuck with Google for many years because their searches were clearly the best. In the last few years (especially the last year), their search quality has fallen off a cliff and there is just no compelling reason to stick with them.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#154

Post by ogre_codes »

caymanjim wrote: post #28
monadic2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google was originally and for many years extremely elegant in it’s simplicity. What, no ads?

Google has always and still does have the least-obtrusive ads. I don't like when ads masquerade as content, but if I have to receive ads, I'd prefer Google-managed ads over anyone else's. Even Stack Overflow fills their pages with hideous animated ads, and they're about the second-least-objectionable ad-bearing site.

> Google has always and still does have the least-obtrusive ads.

This is no longer true. DuckDuckGo definitely has less obtrusive advertising now versus Google. There are fewer adverts per search and adverts are better labeled. Ads have gotten so pervasive, on a typical Google search, organic results are frequently below the fold.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#155

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

mehrdadn wrote: post #56
JohnFen wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am forced to use Comcast, and I really wish I had another option. I have numerous complaints about them. But I have to say -- the quality of their internet service is not one of them. It's been consistently solid and well-performing for me for years.

Their upload speed doesn't bother you?

The upload speed does suck, but it truly does affect only the 1% of the 1%, and is an infrastructure problem. They could and should update the infrastructure, but truly the number of people who demand a serious upload speed and are residential customers is incredibly small.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#156

Post by panarky »

blackearl wrote: post #34
jborichevskiy wrote: post #13

> Recode’s Peter Kafka recently interviewed Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti, and Peretti said something really insightful: what if Google’s ads really aren’t that good? What if Google is just taking credit for clicks on ads just because people would have been searching for that stuff anyway? I’ve been thinking about it all day: what if Google ads actually aren’t that effective and the only reason they make so much is bill…

Same as any other monopolistic company. Comcast isn't necessarily good at providing internet, in fact most of their customers would say they're shit at it. But most people don't have a choice.

Comcast has a physical monopoly or duopoly in most markets. Customers don't have much choice even though Comcast does a shitty job for a premium price.

Google's competitors are literally a click away. Google couldn't get away with Comcasting the web.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#157

Post by Psyladine »

titzer wrote: post #103
Disruptive_Dave wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's precisely what makes Google "good at ads." They built the firehose. Own a destination where billions of people go everyday, find a way to measure their intent, serve my information to them. That = fantastic at ads.

After all this time watchin me, everything I ever asked it, all the ads I never clicked on, all the videos it watched me watch, all my emails it read, heck even after I worked for the dang company for nearly ten years, Google does not understand a very basic, essential thing about me. I hate advertising, damn it! I am sick of looking at it, I am sick of it looking at me. I am sick of hearing about how advertising is…

>Google does not understand a very basic, essential thing about me. I hate advertising, damn it!

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#158

Post by aaronscott »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #4

I've actually moved to other search engines because the quality of the results have gone down dramatically. It seems like google will fixate on one or two keywords in my search (usually the most generic ones) and ignore the rest. In addition, the old google tricks like using quotes for literal values no longer seems to work. It is like google is guessing what I want, rather than trying to find what I have entered as…

I noticed this behavior starting around the time the ranking algorithm became more ML driven. I think this may have been late 2015[0].

I switched to Duck Duck Go a few months back, at first for privacy reasons, but now find myself preferring that search engine's results for most things.

[0] https://searchengineland.com/8-major-google-algorithm-update...

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#159

Post by ogre_codes »

caymanjim wrote: post #28
monadic2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google was originally and for many years extremely elegant in it’s simplicity. What, no ads?

Google has always and still does have the least-obtrusive ads. I don't like when ads masquerade as content, but if I have to receive ads, I'd prefer Google-managed ads over anyone else's. Even Stack Overflow fills their pages with hideous animated ads, and they're about the second-least-objectionable ad-bearing site.

Curiously, this post made me do a quick search and I was surprised at how poorly Bing faired versus Google and DDG.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#160

Post by Retr0spectrum »

thrwaway69 wrote: post #63

Here is a list of alternatives: Ecosia: https://www.ecosia.org Duckduckgo: https://duck.com Yandex: https://yandex.com Cliqz: https://beta.cliqz.com Qwant: https://www.qwant.com Startpage: https://www.startpage.com Searx: https://github.com/asciimoo/searx Bing: https://bing.com Resources to build your own: https://github.com/topics/search-engine https://openwebindex.eu https://commoncrawl.org

I regularly use yandex for reverse image search, it does much better than google and bing.
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