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Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

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Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#61

Post by ziml77 »

cat_plus_plus wrote: post #48

It's also that free sites suck these days. Quora is still free for vast majority of content, just need to register, and has very interesting facts and nuanced opinions. The Economist is a place to read real news rather than talk shows that CNN and Fox have become. Ad supported doesn't seem to work for quality content. So do you want to at least be aware of the quality stuff or just browse junk? Serious question, ther…

I certainly wouldn't want Google to exclude or even automatically downrank paid sites for exactly the reason you bring up here. If Google didn't show the paid stuff, I'd be unlikely to know it exists. And there's nothing wrong with having to pay for high quality information. I wonder if a payment model that provides the option to pay per article might make sense to allow people who know they're not going to regularly use the site to still benefit from the information. Or maybe not per article, but instead the option to pay for a day of access instead of a month.

Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#62

Post by stephc_int13 »

I stopped using Google search (and most of their services) about three years ago.

I used DDG for a while, but I was not convinced.

Bing is average, not as good as Google once was, far from it in fact, but more relevant than the duck and less annoying than Google.

But yeah, search is in a bad state.

Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#63

Post by gnicholas »

richardsocher wrote: post #49

This is one of the many problems we're trying to tackle at you.com (full disclosure, I work there). We felt like it's important that you can select your preferred sources and downvote sources you don't like. For this and other reasons we separate the experience into a private and personalized mode. So you get exactly what you want based on your explicit settings (like StackOverflow code snippets or arxiv papers) and…

What's the business model, currently and in the long run? Also, is this built on top of another search engine's results?

Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#64

Post by resonious »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #59
l0b0 wrote: post #16

It's a trend I've noticed with other services, notably Drive and Calendar - they no longer innovate, just get a UI tweak every few years. It's very reminiscent of cash cows, which typically are resourced to just keep going at minimal expense for as long as possible. Another possibility is that the product isn't "sexy" anymore, so they are having trouble finding the great staff they need to stay at the forefront. This…

Please. No. The stuff just works. From the experience of having several critical business SaaS tools go thru constant UX changes that disrespect the user and make the product less stable, I'm actually glad Google still have some respect for the user. That's why i will gladly buy gsuite for the businesses i provide advice to, yet actively considering replacements of core business infra of which im a power user....for…

I think innovation != backwards-incompatible UX changes. There's quite a lot that Excel can do that GSuite can't, for instance. There's probably room for additional features that don't affect current workflows.

Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#65

Post by the_biot »

pupppet wrote: post #39

It blows my mind that Google penalizes sites for being a fraction of a second slower than they imagine they should be, but a site I can’t actually view- right to the top baby.

But is that still the case? I recall reading about this as well, but that was years ago. In the meantime Google throws up a gigantic disclaimer popup every time you want to use any of their services, slowing things down by seconds.

(Happens every time because I don't whitelist Google cookies, because are you kidding.)

Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#66

Post by oceanplexian »

ziml77 wrote: post #61
cat_plus_plus wrote: post #48

It's also that free sites suck these days. Quora is still free for vast majority of content, just need to register, and has very interesting facts and nuanced opinions. The Economist is a place to read real news rather than talk shows that CNN and Fox have become. Ad supported doesn't seem to work for quality content. So do you want to at least be aware of the quality stuff or just browse junk? Serious question, ther…

I certainly wouldn't want Google to exclude or even automatically downrank paid sites for exactly the reason you bring up here. If Google didn't show the paid stuff, I'd be unlikely to know it exists. And there's nothing wrong with having to pay for high quality information. I wonder if a payment model that provides the option to pay per article might make sense to allow people who know they're not going to regularly…

I’m all for paying for high quality information, but wasn’t the point of the Web that anyone could participate? For example, I’d rather pay an independent blogger in Ukraine to tell me about the border crisis from their lens than go through a centralized gatekeeper like NYT to have some office worker in NYC opine on the crisis.

Unfortunately Google downranks primary sources and sends secondary sources to the top. Essentially the Web has become cable television instead of a global system for the open exchange of knowledge and information and something about that is super depressing and rubs me the wrong way.

Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#67

Post by Aperocky »

resonious wrote: post #64
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please. No. The stuff just works. From the experience of having several critical business SaaS tools go thru constant UX changes that disrespect the user and make the product less stable, I'm actually glad Google still have some respect for the user. That's why i will gladly buy gsuite for the businesses i provide advice to, yet actively considering replacements of core business infra of which im a power user....for…

I think innovation != backwards-incompatible UX changes. There's quite a lot that Excel can do that GSuite can't, for instance. There's probably room for additional features that don't affect current workflows.

You're right, however there are spots where the tools/products have just the 'right amount' of features.

e.g. grep, vim.

Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#68

Post by eawoifjaiowepfj »

taftster wrote: post #23

I think the utility of generic search engines is coming to an end. Services like Google, Bing and DDG are numbered in usefulness. Instead, I am guessing (maybe hoping) that we see a return of the moderated directories, like Yahoo or DMOZ of old. A 2.0 spin on these directories, with lessons learned from all the years. Imagine that you just go to StackOverflow and search there directly for your answer. Want a funny la…

i just use google to search reddit these days.

Re: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

#69

Post by rhizome »

eawoifjaiowepfj wrote: post #68
taftster wrote: post #23

I think the utility of generic search engines is coming to an end. Services like Google, Bing and DDG are numbered in usefulness. Instead, I am guessing (maybe hoping) that we see a return of the moderated directories, like Yahoo or DMOZ of old. A 2.0 spin on these directories, with lessons learned from all the years. Imagine that you just go to StackOverflow and search there directly for your answer. Want a funny la…

i just use google to search reddit these days.

Funny, Google search is so cluttered these days I almost automatically append "reddit" to any product or technique search. I think a lot of people are doing this, because the "People also ask" block on search results will often have questions like "best lawnmower reddit?" (a fine example of that Google quality we've all heard so much about)
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