I just use duckduckgo with fallback bangs when the results aren't satisfactory to me, usually falling back to Bing.
Google doesn't deserve my time or my eyes.
Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?
21–30 of 284 posts
Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?
#22Im afraid this is potentially dangerously political.
Are you only going to filter obvious spam and sites that republish other’s content, or are you going to block sites that are “harmful” or disseminate “disinformation”?
Who will get to decide which media bubble I’m in?
Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?
#23I think we are attacking the wrong angle here. This should be solved at google
Google is a lost cause by now. The only solution is a competitor. DDG is just as bad since they source results from google so that is not the solution.
DDG don't source any results from Google. They rely on Bing and increasingly their own bot.
Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?
#24Isn't this Google's job? Are developers a small but lucrative target and so the suits at Google don't see the benefit of improving that experience by cleaning up the spam? Can we just nudge them to do so under the threat of an influential minority leaving due to their use case being affected?
I think you're wildly overestimating the influence of the minority within HN (or other similar communities) that actually care enough to switch to another search engine. This reminds me of the Linux gamers who claim that they can influence game development companies by purchasing games with Linux ports, but wind up being less than 0.5% of sales of most games with Linux ports, which leads manufacturers to ignore that…
game companies might have ignored us, but in the end it created a space for valve and codeweavers to fill.
Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?
#25Isn't this Google's job? Are developers a small but lucrative target and so the suits at Google don't see the benefit of improving that experience by cleaning up the spam? Can we just nudge them to do so under the threat of an influential minority leaving due to their use case being affected?
Is there a word for this tendency to say, "it's someone else's job" as a justification for doing nothing at all to help or improve one's own circumstances? I see more and more of it in the public discourse over the last years and it kind of bothers me. I see it a lot in conversations related to poverty or climate change, but it is as we see here by no means exclusive to those topics. To the original replyer: you coul…
Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?
#26Im afraid this is potentially dangerously political. Are you only going to filter obvious spam and sites that republish other’s content, or are you going to block sites that are “harmful” or disseminate “disinformation”? Who will get to decide which media bubble I’m in?
It can be made configurable - an option for github clones, another for SO clones, etc..., the folks who want to filter "harmful" content will add their category
Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?
#27A reply to those in this thread saying that Google should/will take care of this:
Imagine you had a position in a huge market that was as close to unassailable as there has ever been. Imagine also that you have a controlling position over the mechanisms that allow people to participate in that market.
Now try to make a case against optimizing for squeezing every last cent out at the cost of the user experience.
In 10 years we will regard Google the way we regard cable companies today. Maybe even worse since we need to be able to search for answers more than we ever needed cable TV.
Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?
#28Isn't this Google's job? Are developers a small but lucrative target and so the suits at Google don't see the benefit of improving that experience by cleaning up the spam? Can we just nudge them to do so under the threat of an influential minority leaving due to their use case being affected?
Google has a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, which is so much work as it is! Why are you trying to ask them to do more?
Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?
#29How about a search engine that does this already?
Re: Ask HN: Let's build an HN uBlacklist to improve our Google search results?
#30Isn't this Google's job? Are developers a small but lucrative target and so the suits at Google don't see the benefit of improving that experience by cleaning up the spam? Can we just nudge them to do so under the threat of an influential minority leaving due to their use case being affected?
Is there a word for this tendency to say, "it's someone else's job" as a justification for doing nothing at all to help or improve one's own circumstances? I see more and more of it in the public discourse over the last years and it kind of bothers me. I see it a lot in conversations related to poverty or climate change, but it is as we see here by no means exclusive to those topics. To the original replyer: you coul…
> I worry that the number of domains pumping out crap might be far greater than we know, and that might hamper the effectiveness of this.
I'm sure you're right about the number of spam domains, but Pareto suggests that blocking even a small percentage of them might provide a large gain.