Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google backtracks on search results design

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 356 posts

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#141

Post by bufferoverflow »

anonytrary wrote: post #138
bufferoverflow wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's much worse is they removed the precise and custom image size search. It's now impossible to search for a 32x32 icon or a 3200x1800 wallpaper. This dumbing down and feature removal is sad and silly.

I didn't notice that. I never used exact dimension searches because more often than not, they eliminate all of the interesting results which I would have been able to crop/resize to my desired dimensions manually. It's better to have some results you can transform than to have no results.

They also had very useful "larger than 4MP", "larger than 8MP", ... options. It was easy to find very high resolution images.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#142

Post by kiwijamo »

lrem wrote: post #123
toyg wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don’t really compare that hard. If DDG’s experience is intuitively easier than Google’s in the first minutes (because there are no ads and results are good enough), people will switch. The real problem is the “embedness” level of Google is much higher than any search engine achieved before: a switcher must make a pretty serious effort to change browser settings, change tools etc, and you can bet top dollars th…

I've just checked the "there are no ads on DDG" and saw half of the content space taken by Wikipedia-sourced infobox, half by ad, searching for "insurance". Interestingly enough, Google shows me no ads for the same query (whole screen of local maps, then related queries, then organic results). "Car insurance" though ;) Disclaimer: I do work in Google, but nowhere near anything user visible (I'm developing SRE infrast…

Did a DDG search and there are no ads. Just the Wikipedia infobox and a list of insurance companies in my country (and the Wikipedia article for Insurance at #3). It makes a very good starting point for someone wanting to get quotes from a range of companies etc.

Google's results is interesting though as it starts with one insurance company only (ad placement? It doesn't show it as a ad tho but it looks and feels like one given it's isolated from the rest of the results after the fold). It is then followed by a map which is an odd choice as generally most people in my country manage their insurance online or over the phone. Then below the fold more companies can be found but with media stories(?!) thrown in as well interrupting the flow.

It's been a long time since I've used Google as my daily driver and I'm gobsmacked at how badly it executes this query. It used to be very good but no longer. I have used DDG for some years now and it generally works just fine for me. This limited experiment in going back to Google has made me happier with DDG as my default search engine.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#143

Post by catalogia »

product50 wrote: post #117
Animats wrote: post #100

This may be a major event in Google's history - the point where they overdid ads and started to be perceived as a inferior service. This is sometimes called "pulling a Myspace". Myspace was once the top social network. They looked unchallengeable. Then they got greedy. Myspace kept upping their ad content until usage dropped. Instead of backing off the ads, they upped the ad content even more to maintain revenue. Usa…

Nothing like this is going to happen. Google Search is leaps and bounds ahead beyond anything else. And Google Assistant on top of this makes it even more effective. This was a mistake by Google and they heard the feedback and corrected it. MySpace analogy doesn't make sense since there is no Facebook, which was a competent social network, here. Search is a massive investment and you don't just have random companies…

> "Duckduckgo itself uses Bing Search as its backend."

Why would that even matter? It's good enough no matter how it works. Frankly it's better than google since it doesn't have nearly as many anti-patterns.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#145

Post by [deleted] »

saghm wrote: post #28
dredmorbius wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes: you cannot DIRECTLY edit the URL in the navbar. Nor, for that matter, can you click, ctrl-A (yes, Virginia, I have and use a Bluetooth keyboard). Instead it's click, then Copy Icon. Utterly blinkered. Oddly: Incognito mode is not (yet) crippled in this manner. Don't get me started on pull-to-nuke-whatever-you'd-been-composing-or-losing-your-place-in-infernal-scroll

> yes, Virginia, I have and use a Bluetooth clipboard I'm assuming from context that your mean keyboard, but the idea sounds kind of cool so I have to ask: any chance this is a term for a a bluetooth device solely designed to facilitate copy-pasting between other devices?

[deleted]

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#146

Post by allovernow »

gundmc wrote: post #102
userbinator wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, an obfuscation of functionality that clearly shows their attempts at behavioural conditioning.

HN has gone off the deep end in reading conspiratorial motivations behind every UI change and tweak.

It is in a hacker's nature to assume the worst, and often rightly so.

Many of kind of people that come to HN have personally worked on various forms of gamification and rule bending. It's as natural to SV culture as water to fish - indeed some of the biggest companies wouldn't be around without skirting rules and arguably morals.

The stench of MBAs and quarterly profit optimizing execs is all over the valley.

And then the ignorance/apathy of the layman adds an extra layer of plausibility to such accusations.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#147

Post by negamax »

kevsim wrote: post #140
negamax wrote: post #129

What's a good alternative to Google?

Well since this is HN, the overwhelming majority will say DuckDuckGo. I switched to DDG as my default browser search around 3 months ago and it's mostly been fine. However, when I _don't_ find what I'm looking for, I do find myself popping open Google for that specific search (sometimes finding things I didn't find with DDG). So I guess I don't have full faith in DDG just yet.

I switched to DDG. It seems quite good to me. I am mostly interested in recent events and Twitter Search and news websites is good for that for my needs. DDG is perfect replacement.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#148

Post by dvdkon »

anonytrary wrote: post #137
harshitaneja wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google was sued by Getty and had to make the change. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/internet-rages-after...

I remember that, and I am a still a tiny bit salty about how it impacted me as a user. Ever since, it has been so unnecessarily tedious get the raw image link from Google. Half the time, I end up with a data url, sometimes I get taken to the backing website, who usually don't know anything about accessibility, sometimes I get the image. It's all just so much worse now. That said, it is absolutely theft for Google to…

$1 per 1000 clicks is ridiculous. Google make a lot of money, but that's because of their scale, not because they have somehow made search a miracle source of income. Would you also argue that, say, indexes of literature or libraries should pay the authors money per item viewed, because the data isn't "theirs"?

Paying websites with good SEO would make filtering out abusers of search engines (no meaningful content, scraping other websites and republishing, clickbait...) even harder, as there would now be a direct ROI on SEO.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#149

Post by spiderfarmer »

anonytrary wrote: post #137
harshitaneja wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google was sued by Getty and had to make the change. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/internet-rages-after...

I remember that, and I am a still a tiny bit salty about how it impacted me as a user. Ever since, it has been so unnecessarily tedious get the raw image link from Google. Half the time, I end up with a data url, sometimes I get taken to the backing website, who usually don't know anything about accessibility, sometimes I get the image. It's all just so much worse now. That said, it is absolutely theft for Google to…

I have a website with over 1.000.000 pictures. I’m still a bit salty that my images get 1M monthly impressions in image search and just 15k visitors.

If I made a website like Image Search, hotlinked all the images and burried a visit website button somewhere as a ‘curtesy’, I’d be sued out of existence within a couple of weeks.

Post reply on HN