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Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

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171–180 of 221 posts

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

#171
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and on the other hand sites like codegrepper and other such scraper/scam sites are frequently showing in my search results - which are just SO results. I don't know if they're gaming Google's search or google is actually condoning this (like they've been condoning pinterest's shenanigans for almost 10 years now)

There is a ublock origin list which you can import to filter search results: https://github.com/quenhus/uBlock-Origin-dev-filter

I think I speak for many others when I say thank you for sharing this.

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

#172

Google since Page and Brin bailed has become a highly political organization interested only in short term revenue growth, and is no longer an engineering organization focused on product excellence. Anyone that has used their messaging products over the years has noticed this. This type of business attracts a different class of talent and nearly all of the old guard has cashed in their stock and left.

Spot on.

The really interesting question is whether this is actually avoidable or if all highly successful human organizations that started with high bar ideals and brilliant folks are eventually doomed to rot in place the way Google has.

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

#173
post #141
post #14

It isn't so much about whether "Google cares" or otherwise. There are a lot of sites and a lot of vested interests trying to game their search rankings, and a huge number of keywords that the game is playing out in. Sometimes low quality sites will have the advantage and sometimes high quality sites will have the advantage. Google is working with a bias to high quality, but they are fighting a broad fight against per…

How do you know this? Any links to read more?

I'm mostly recalling the occasional headline news when Google does a big engine revamp [0] then extrapolating to say they probably do a lot of smaller ones that they don't draw attention to.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Google_Search

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

#174

It's a rather standard tech company model: you build a product so good it becomes indispensable, then you stick the customers in a vice and squeeze until all the money comes out. "Produce the best search results" hasn't been the guiding principle for a good decade now. "Not growing is failing" is the most toxic principle of modern business. There is a finite amount of people, of money to be made. Ever-increasing inco…

I would just answer: ad buyers are Google's clients, and users are more like fodder. Not an original thought, I know.

I would be interested to know what major users of Google's advertising services think about the quality of their services recently.

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

#175

Google since Page and Brin bailed has become a highly political organization interested only in short term revenue growth, and is no longer an engineering organization focused on product excellence. Anyone that has used their messaging products over the years has noticed this. This type of business attracts a different class of talent and nearly all of the old guard has cashed in their stock and left.

Spot on. The really interesting question is whether this is actually avoidable or if all highly successful human organizations that started with high bar ideals and brilliant folks are eventually doomed to rot in place the way Google has.

To be, or not to be evil . . .

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

#176
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I change my mobile browser to use the same user agent?

Won't work if they care, as there are other verifications: IP addresses https://developers.google.com/search/apis/ipranges/googlebot... , domain name https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/...

>Won't work if they care,

Indeed. Many have lazy useragent implementations though

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

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're leading the field in AI/ML innovation which is the future. Wouldn't count them out when their stock performed best of any FAAMG this past year and revs are growing faster than the rest

IBM made Deep Blue, Watson (the Jeopardy player), two of the 10 most powerful computers in service today, and outperformed the S&P 500 from 2001 to 2014. What's your point? A gigacorp has tons of inertia?

My point was they're leading the field in AI when it is the future. What they're doing goes way beyond what Watson was. IBM also wasn't a trillion dollar company growing at 40% https://twitter.com/JonErlichman/status/1453089818402041857

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

#179

I just discovered how poor the search results are if you're logged in with your Google account. Have to log out or view in incognito mode just to see what you were searching for. Also I didn't realize how censored Google's results were until I started comparing them side by side with DDG.

Can you search as if you're from a different country? My incognito searches are useless because they are region-specific. Edit: Yes, you can do this if you click on settings -> show more settings -> show more countries and pick the country you want. Which seems like a pain.

You should be able to do this by navigating to google.com/?gl=us, google.com/?gl=sg, etc.

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

#180

I've noticed in the past 2-3 months that results from StackOverflow, Wikipedia, and official programming language documentation sites seem to have been abruptly downranked. They used to typically be in the top 3 results for me for appropriate queries, but now they frequently aren't even on the first page.

That's why I created "Developer search" chrome extension to easily add filters for site and time on your search https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/developer-search/d...
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