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Google backtracks on search results design

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Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#301

Post by userbinator »

lopmotr wrote: post #300
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…

If URLs are read by humans, they need to be human readable. If you use a prominently displayed name to contain crap like "?id=22107823" which is meaningless to most users, then get off a search engine. Nobody needs to see that. Give it a human readable name if you want humans to read it or hide it completely if you don't. It's amazing how long unreadable URLs have lingered. I'm all for them being as hidden as HTML co…

"?id=22107823" which is meaningless to most users

Absolute rubbish. That is obviously a number identifying the item. I wish a lot of URLs would be shorter, but that's different. I also offer this piece of evidence:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7678729

People are intelligent. They can learn and see things if you give them a chance, and you're basically advocating for keeping them stupid and unknowing by hiding things from them... why?

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#302

Post by toyg »

Klonoar wrote: post #291
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…

There's a difference in our indifference, you know. "People don't really compare that hard" has been demonstrated to be false - if people didn't care that much, Bing & co would've seen much greater success in the past few years. It's not like this hasn't been tried before. Google is so damn good at search that being "good enough" isn't good enough for the average user. You have to be as good as Google. This is why Ap…

Bing was really, really bad when it started. Perception was shaped and a lot of people go out of their way to avoid it, even though it's now just fine for most uses. In this sense, DDG has an advantage, because it has had time to improve substantially before its brand hit the mainstream (which has not happened yet).

I'm still convinced the advantage Google has is not fundamentally technical. A lot of people expect it not because it's good, but because it has always meant "search" for them, ever since they got online. Google spent a generation at the top, and that sort of entrenchment is really hard to lose. Even Microsoft didn't really lose their primacy on the desktop - the internet just got big enough to escape their stranglehold.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#303

Post by toyg »

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…

With adblockers on, I get no ads on either engine.

With adblockers off, I get 2 ads on DDG and 4 on Google.

I suspect your adblocker is just more targeted towards Google.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#304

Post by guerrilla »

input_sh wrote: post #104
guerrilla wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really scary. And it's a shame Firefox is so slow on mobile...

A complete re-do of Firefox on Android hit Nightly. It'll replace current version of Firefox (stable) in the first half of 2020. Judging by the current state, it'll arrive with no add-on support, which I honestly hope doesn't happen.

Thanks for letting me know. This is great news.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#305

Post by ibly31 »

codyb wrote: post #273
userbinator wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no other reason, than their desire to "herd" uesrs, why they could not have the additional options to share/copy and have it behave like any other edit control, i.e. you can tap the other icons to copy or share, and more importantly still start editing it without going an extra step.

That sounds annoying. This is like Slack forcing their WYSIWYG editor on me. Thankfully Apple hasn’t done this yet and the URL bar still acts very much as it should. But just ask me how I feel about navigating other parts of Apple’s UI! Dunno who they’re user testing with but these changes make me a bit ornery sometimes.

Thankfully Slack backtracked and made that editor optional. I was pretty relieved after a few weeks of frustration

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#306

Post by JeremyNT »

guerrilla wrote: post #304
input_sh wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A complete re-do of Firefox on Android hit Nightly. It'll replace current version of Firefox (stable) in the first half of 2020. Judging by the current state, it'll arrive with no add-on support, which I honestly hope doesn't happen.

Thanks for letting me know. This is great news.

Don't get too excited, it doesn't yet support add-ons like ublock origin...

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#308

Post by [deleted] »

makomk wrote: post #132
saghm wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

There's no such Bluetooth device that I know of, but KDE Connect used to allow cross-device copy and paste between Android and desktop over WiFi until Google killed that feature off by disabling the clipboard access it needed.

[deleted]

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#309

Post by bostik »

zepto wrote: post #281
bostik wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you are conflating two things. AdWords and keyword-based contextual advertising was not problematic by itself. (And I say this as a person who absolutely hates ads.) The problem is all the associated crapware, bloat, intrusion, bandwidth hogging, end-user hostility to point of abuse, dark patterns, intentional misdirection, A/B-test-optimised serendipitous confusion, SEO game-theory shenanigans, and ABOVE A…

I don’t think there is any conflation. AdWords is the incentive structure that creates all of the hazards you listed - it is the cause. In the same way we could say the cholera virus is not by itself a problem - it is the associated symptoms that are the problem.

Well, I don't think AdWords - in their original form - were a problem. But I definitely agree with you that it and its ilk are powering the perverse incentives, and what has resulted of them: the entire adtech ecosystem.[ß]

I can still recall the bad vibes when Google announced their acquisition of DoubleClick. In the early days their search advertising had been non-intrusive, text-only, rendered server side, and visually out of the way. Banner ads were introduced only some time later. (That was already a step in the wrong direction, IMO.) DC, on the other hand, was known as an invasive bad actor who shoveled unwanted crapware to browsers and had already earned the reputation of an online stalker. In fact, ad blockers had existed long before Google got into serving them. Privoxy, anyone?

All the hazards I listed are direct causes of adtech's surveillance business model, and the neverending quest to remember every possible piece of information available on the end-users. I'm not sure comparison with cholera is the most accurate one. (It's a bacteria, after all.) Malaria, a parasite, might be a better fit for this purpose. The symptoms are what makes either one dangerous, but instead of trying to eradicate just one type of a problem, we would do better to purge the environment from what makes the organisms' existence and breeding possible in the first place.

ß: Honest question. What do you call an ecosystem comprised entirely of parasites?

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#310

Post by clarry »

scarface74 wrote: post #288
clarry wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You realize the entire purpose of HN is to advertise jobs for YC companies?

I don't need HN critically, and there are alternatives.

Even if I did, let me clarify something. When I go to amazon.com and start looking for pens, I don't really consider the product listings to be ads at that point, even though each is obviously advertising a product. The listing is the content I am there for. If I go to a company's website to learn about their products, they are clearly advertising their own (first party) products. I'm fine with that.

Note that there is a difference between "an ad" and advertising. Characteristic of ads is that they are not the content you're there for. The real content is independent of "an ad", and you could block or remove ads and the real content would not suffer. Characteristic of ads is that they are not the topic of the site/content/video you're reading/watching (they might relate to the same subject matter, but they are not the topic). Also characteristic of ads is that they're advertising third party products/services, which again have little to do with the actual content.

If you removed a company's products from their own website, or the products from amazon's listing, then you'd be removing the content I'm specifically after. Does not fill my criteria for "an ad."

Now as to how this pertains to HN: HN was specifically created for startup-related links. So if they're advertising startup jobs here, they are very much posting the kind of content users would come here for. That would be actual content, not ads. Also, like a company advertising their own products on their own website, I think it is quite appropriate for YC to advertise companies they've funded here.

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