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If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

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Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#61

Post by kodah »

fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #22

Honestly I think people are completely underestimating the difficulty of a good search engine. Google was better ten years ago because search was an easier problem to solve back then. End of story. Nobody is coming along with a better search engine. There is too much spam, content gaming, and money to be made by hacking search. These posts should almost be blocked from hacker news. ITs a fantasy. Its like saying that…

> Nobody is coming along with a better search engine

https://neeva.com/ better than pretty much any solution (Qwant, DDG, etc) I've personally tested. It also indexes specific websites like StackOverflow, GitHub, and GMail.

Edit:

Neeva does require an account to create because eventually the product is going to require a subscription.

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#62

Post by sokoloff »

kodah wrote: post #61
fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #22

Honestly I think people are completely underestimating the difficulty of a good search engine. Google was better ten years ago because search was an easier problem to solve back then. End of story. Nobody is coming along with a better search engine. There is too much spam, content gaming, and money to be made by hacking search. These posts should almost be blocked from hacker news. ITs a fantasy. Its like saying that…

> Nobody is coming along with a better search engine https://neeva.com/ better than pretty much any solution (Qwant, DDG, etc) I've personally tested. It also indexes specific websites like StackOverflow, GitHub, and GMail. Edit: Neeva does require an account to create because eventually the product is going to require a subscription.

"See results for '' Create your free Neeva account."

"To continue searching and access all of Neeva's features, create your free account. Already a Neeva member? Sign in"

Yeah, no.

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#63

Post by DantesKite »

fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #22

Honestly I think people are completely underestimating the difficulty of a good search engine. Google was better ten years ago because search was an easier problem to solve back then. End of story. Nobody is coming along with a better search engine. There is too much spam, content gaming, and money to be made by hacking search. These posts should almost be blocked from hacker news. ITs a fantasy. Its like saying that…

I don't think these posts should be blocked, because they create discussion, which creates interest, which incentivizes for problem solving.

Humans are incredibly good at solving engineering problems they can see from a mile away, although it takes time to solve.

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#65

Post by kauguste281 »

Google sucks compared to Google from years ago. It's still vastly superior to the modern alternatives. It doesn't help that almost all alternatives out there are just Bing with different window dressing, so going through alternatives is just annoying as they have all the same holes in the search results.

Another big issue is that everybody just tries to copy Google. I don't need Google in less good, I want to see something that organize the Internet in a more useful way than just plain text search (e.g. what about Youtube-style recommendations for websites, old-school Yahoo-style dictionaries, AI categorization, Dejanews-style search for webforums, a button to filter out everything that requires a login or whatever).

I feel there is a lot of untapped potential that gets missed by just trying to be a Google search clone.

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#66

Post by Kuinox »

zargon wrote: post #40
fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #22

Honestly I think people are completely underestimating the difficulty of a good search engine. Google was better ten years ago because search was an easier problem to solve back then. End of story. Nobody is coming along with a better search engine. There is too much spam, content gaming, and money to be made by hacking search. These posts should almost be blocked from hacker news. ITs a fantasy. Its like saying that…

No. Google is an actively hostile experience. Try it without adblock and get a taste of how most people get treated by Google. And for the search results, Kagi is already better for 90% of my queries. It's much more difficult now to build a competitive search engine, but saying it's impossible and discussions should be banned is toxic. (And already basically proven wrong with existing competing search engines.)

I disagree, Kagi is not yet "better in 90% of the queries" than google, it's good enough to not have to launch google in 90% of it's query.

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#67

Post by kodah »

sokoloff wrote: post #62
kodah wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody is coming along with a better search engine https://neeva.com/ better than pretty much any solution (Qwant, DDG, etc) I've personally tested. It also indexes specific websites like StackOverflow, GitHub, and GMail. Edit: Neeva does require an account to create because eventually the product is going to require a subscription.

"See results for ' ' Create your free Neeva account." "To continue searching and access all of Neeva's features, create your free account. Already a Neeva member? Sign in" Yeah, no.

Ah, Neeva is eventually going to be a paid product, that's why it's that way. That said, their membership is pretty cheap for what you get.

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#69

Post by RC_ITR »

fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #22

Honestly I think people are completely underestimating the difficulty of a good search engine. Google was better ten years ago because search was an easier problem to solve back then. End of story. Nobody is coming along with a better search engine. There is too much spam, content gaming, and money to be made by hacking search. These posts should almost be blocked from hacker news. ITs a fantasy. Its like saying that…

The progression that people almost always forget:

1) New system comes out that indexes/controls/regulates a naively created dataset

2) Data consumers adopt that system and experience benefits

3) Data suppliers learn rules of system and take advantage of it to improve the positioning of their data, thus breaking the intent of a system built on the assumption of naive creation

4) Users complain about the broken system

5) New entrants realize that the original system actually solved the core problem really well, and there are no easy ways to solve the 'gaming the system' problem

6) Flawed system remains the best available option indefinitely

It's like entropy, there's just no fighting it.

EDIT: And to extend this beyond Google - do you see a lot of long text blocks in 7 second tik tok videos? That's because the creator found a way to game the algorithm.

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#70

Post by LeoPanthera »

kauguste281 wrote: post #65

Google sucks compared to Google from years ago. It's still vastly superior to the modern alternatives. It doesn't help that almost all alternatives out there are just Bing with different window dressing, so going through alternatives is just annoying as they have all the same holes in the search results. Another big issue is that everybody just tries to copy Google. I don't need Google in less good, I want to see som…

Google had a "search only forums" filter. I was devastated when they took it away.

You can fake it by searching one forum at a time with "site:whatever.com", but you have to do one at a time and that doesn't help if there are forums you don't know about.

Google could double its usefulness overnight just by bringing this back.

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