Google backtracks on search results design • Hacker News Board

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#221

Post by natch » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 2:33 PM UTC

harshitaneja wrote: post #130

blackrock wrote: post #121

Can you also tell Google to fix the image search page? The new design is stupid. I prefer the previous design. The new design splits the page vertically, when you click on a picture. And its purpose, which is quite confusing, is to follow a second track of searches related to that picture. But that just makes the usage confusing. I want to click on the picture in order to see it in magnification mode, to have it fill…

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

Just remove Getty or maybe all stock images from the index. There are too many watermarked images in search results anyway. These images could still be made searchable through some other dedicated search with a conforming UI for users who really want a cross-vendor stock images search.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#222

Post by GuB-42 » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 2:33 PM UTC

jonny383 wrote: post #7

userbinator wrote: post #4

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22107823 Does this mean they'll also "backtrack" on their destruction of the URL? I was extremely disturbed and horrified when I realised that not only did they replace / with >, but also seemed to arbitrarily remove and rewrite pieces of URLs shown in the results (e.g. all articles from HM would show nothing more than "news.ycombinator.com > item", which was…

I opened Chrome on a friends phone (first time on Chrome mobile in years) and was shocked to see the url bar is no longer editable. It just gave me a weird context menu with a copy icon. I guess they really want to funnel everyone through search...

It is editable, you just need to use the pencil button. It is an unerstandable choice because it puts forward the most common uses of the address bar and still allows you to edit.

I just hate it because it breaks well established UI conventions. The thing looks like a text field but doesn't act like a text field.

For me it is more of a "stop messing with UI" situation than trying to funnel everything through search. If they wanted to do that, they would have kept the dedicated search button. Early Android phones had that.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#223

Post by nottorp » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 2:34 PM UTC

pieterk wrote: post #17

When will we realize that adwords and everything it inspired was a wrong turn for the internet? I’d much rather pay a monthly fee to get the services I want. I understand that Google and Facebook have gone too far down this path, and they will say such a service is not as profitable, but ultimately their business model seems unsustainable. People search for the truth, and while you can sell anybody anything, the trut…

I'd very much like that mythical universal micropayment platform to show up. Probably won't happen, or it will be too expensive because every site will think "We're only charging as much as a Starbucks coffee!" [Note: I don't drink Starbucks coffee, just have a faint idea that it's overpriced.]

Although, shockingly enough, one of the sites I regularly visit (ars technica) saw the light and greatly reduced their subscription price like 2 years ago. And earned my subscription as a result.

I'd pay for a couple more sites if they dropped the coffee fallacy.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#224

Post by clarry » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 2:35 PM UTC

BjoernKW wrote: post #162

drno123 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree about search result quality. I switched to DDG over a year ago and only need to use !g bangs when I search either for some specific local stuff or when I search for news that have happened in the last day or two. Actually, in some cases DDG gives more relevant search results than Google, especially for programming stuff.

This is what I keep hearing about DuckDuckGo and I'd really like this to be true for myself and my search engine usage. Unfortunately, however, having used DuckDuckGo for the last few weeks my experience has been quite the opposite (described here in some more detail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22106837 ), especially when it comes to programming-related queries.

It would be nice to conduct these experiments while actually saving the searches (and results) for further study & ideas from the community on how to improve them.

I hear a lot of anecdotes about search working/not working but concrete examples remain elusive.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#225

Post by wffurr » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 2:40 PM UTC

jonny383 wrote: post #204

wffurr wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you are saying is the most common actions, copy and share, were behind a confusing an easy to mess up long press gesture. A whole lot of people in this thread have never watched a normal person use a smartphone in a UX study.

I'm saying it operates as mobile users have learnt to use over the past decade (and how the rest of the OS UI works).

Long press, especially on selected text, has always been a subpar user interaction.

None of this UX design is perfect or totally settled, especially since it's only been 10 years since it's been mainstream.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#226

Post by room271 » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 2:45 PM UTC

Okay, Verizon's consent process is a disaster. After following several options to try and opt out I gave up and left. Which unfortunately means I can't read this article.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#227

Post by stevespang » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

Isn't Google just following the lead of all news sites who claim to be reputable, but are burying "sponsored news" or "sponsored BS" on their websites which are PAID FOR by companies and not really news ?

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#228

Post by clarry » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #75

dangrossman wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as you realize the web without ads is a much smaller and less commercial one. That may be fine with you. But a lot of things hundreds of millions of people use every day would have to go away. Subscriptions can't replace ads, as individuals don't have nearly as much discretionary money to spend as companies have in their advertising budgets. We've already given them that money when we bought our groceries, an…

> As long as you realize the web without ads is a much smaller and less commercial one. This is fine. People should make web pages because they have something to say, not because they want to make money. Since the advertisers can stop supporting a site, they effectively become the arbiters of right and wrong on the internet. Anything paid for by ads is inherently worse and less trustworthy than independent creations…

I fully agree, and furthermore, I think that if ad-supported sites were wiped out, the people who genuinely cared about the content would come out and make a replacement with just the useful content. People who have a need find a way.

Right now I can't think of any ad-supported site that I critically need. It could all go away and my web experience would probably be better for it.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#229

Post by jccalhoun » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 2:51 PM UTC

40four wrote: post #212

This has been trending now a few days, but I still don’t get it. Seems nobody can really say what exactly about this design says ‘advertisement’? I get the feeling Mr. Mod’s tweet caught fire because of the sentiment, of Google oppression and dominance, and not many stopped to think what in particular about the design they don’t like. Personally there is nothing immediately offensive to the way the results look. In f…

Totally agree. I can understand that someone might think the favicon makes it look tacky but ads have the word AD next to them. It isn't hard to tell the difference.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#230

Post by dvdkon » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 2:52 PM UTC

DailyHN wrote: post #164

dvdkon wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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, sc…

> 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"? At least someone has to pay for the book to be in a library.

Yes, because the author didn't make its contents available for free. Websites can do the same, and many do. They could even disallow other sites from crawling them and processing their contents through the (mostly) respected robots.txt. But publishing something for free, not forbidding crawling through well-understood mechanisms, and then demanding payment is ridiculous.