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Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy

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Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy

#21

Post by takeda »

jbritton wrote: post #10
bovermyer wrote: post #2

Fun experiment - try finding something on the World Wide Web without using a search engine. It's not as impossible as you might think. But it's certainly not easy.

Out of curiosity I have no idea how to approach this. Are there indexes of websites available to the public that you are suggesting that can be searched via grep or some simple scripting? Or are you suggesting writing a web crawler to build our own index? Or are you suggesting finding curated links to sites?

I miss the time when Internet was so small that a curated list was possible (Yahoo was priding itself to be biggest curated list[1])

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/19990208021747/http://yahoo.com/

Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy

#22

Post by bovermyer »

jbritton wrote: post #10
bovermyer wrote: post #2

Fun experiment - try finding something on the World Wide Web without using a search engine. It's not as impossible as you might think. But it's certainly not easy.

Out of curiosity I have no idea how to approach this. Are there indexes of websites available to the public that you are suggesting that can be searched via grep or some simple scripting? Or are you suggesting writing a web crawler to build our own index? Or are you suggesting finding curated links to sites?

There are multiple ways that I know of to approach this problem, but part of the experiment is to explore for yourself.

Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy

#23

Post by saagarjha »

ehsankia wrote: post #16
basch wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I support the author here. There was a promise of a marketplace of ideas, making the world a better place, that being interconnected would make the world smarter and democratize knowledge. All that may be true, it may be out there, but it's damn hard to find. Google, Youtube, Reddit, and Facebook all prioritize freshness. Instead of being exposed to things outside our comfort zones, we take solace protected inside fi…

> There was a promise of a marketplace of ideas Said commenter, as they type a comment in a marketplace of ideas where people discuss fairly complex ideas. The internet is a tool, not a solution. I absolutely disagree that it's hard to find for anyone looking for it. The issue is that most people aren't looking for it, and you can't force them. A lot of people are just looking for entertainment, and that's perfectly…

> Instead of the best answer, what usually floats to the top is the most repeated, the most seod, the newest, the most politically correct.

This happens quite often on Hacker News. One of the fastest and easiest ways to accumulate karma is to be the first to post something like "$hated_company has always been doing $horrible_thing, they need to change", which most people agree with, every time a popular story about them shows up. (Thankfully, usually only a couple of these appear in most discussions, and usually people don't spam this.)

> Said commenter, as they type a comment in a marketplace of ideas where people discuss fairly complex ideas.

Hacker News can be great for complex discussions, but it's not free of filter bubbles and echo chambers.

Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy

#24

Post by asjw »

bovermyer wrote: post #2

Fun experiment - try finding something on the World Wide Web without using a search engine. It's not as impossible as you might think. But it's certainly not easy.

That could be true to some extent, but the best information I've found on the internet since 1995 have been tematic forums.

Still nowadays the best use of Google for me is to find those tematic forums

And I must say search result quality has declined a lot over the years with the past 3 being worse of the sum of the past 20.

Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy

#26

Post by agumonkey »

bovermyer wrote: post #2

Fun experiment - try finding something on the World Wide Web without using a search engine. It's not as impossible as you might think. But it's certainly not easy.

I came on just around altavista/google so I don't remember, did people only use registries before ? or word of mouth ?

must be weird to buy a domain name and still be mostly anonymous and invisible :)

Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy

#27

Post by 101404 »

jbritton wrote: post #10
bovermyer wrote: post #2

Fun experiment - try finding something on the World Wide Web without using a search engine. It's not as impossible as you might think. But it's certainly not easy.

Out of curiosity I have no idea how to approach this. Are there indexes of websites available to the public that you are suggesting that can be searched via grep or some simple scripting? Or are you suggesting writing a web crawler to build our own index? Or are you suggesting finding curated links to sites?

There was the Open Directory Project. Then AOL bought it and killed it. This is the archived remains:

https://www.dmoz-odp.org/

Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy

#28

Post by danem »

saagarjha wrote: post #23
ehsankia wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was a promise of a marketplace of ideas Said commenter, as they type a comment in a marketplace of ideas where people discuss fairly complex ideas. The internet is a tool, not a solution. I absolutely disagree that it's hard to find for anyone looking for it. The issue is that most people aren't looking for it, and you can't force them. A lot of people are just looking for entertainment, and that's perfectly…

> Instead of the best answer, what usually floats to the top is the most repeated, the most seod, the newest, the most politically correct. This happens quite often on Hacker News. One of the fastest and easiest ways to accumulate karma is to be the first to post something like "$hated_company has always been doing $horrible_thing, they need to change", which most people agree with, every time a popular story about t…

> Hacker News can be great for complex discussions, but it's not free of filter bubbles and echo chambers.

Nothing on or off the internet is. That is why it is important to keep an open mind and read widely and voraciously.

Re: Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy

#30

Post by remir »

It's all perspective.

Google didn't ruined the internet. In fact, the internet isn't in ruin. Perhaps the author should reconsider treating Google, or any search engine, as sources of truth.

And if Google ruined the internet, then why give them more power by using Gmail?

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