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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?

#71

Post by timothylaurent »

richardsocher wrote: post #55

They don't know yet about you.com? - No spam, no ads, you control the ranker with your source preferences, hardcore private mode that doesn't save anything nor uses your location (even DDG saves your queries and gives location-based results), many developer apps that include what you want - eg code snippets in a StackOverflow app, AI apps like you.com/write that would write essays for you, etc. Also, many folks (outs…

You's been a refreshing break from the Google-sphere - and it gets better and better - The mobile browser is also great!

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

#72

Post by AlexCoventry »

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.

I experimented with neeva, because I'd really like an alternative to Google, even a paid one. However, I found its results pretty disappointing. At least for my work, I had to go back to Google, because I don't want to waste time "on the clock."

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

#73

Post by black_puppydog »

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.)

Came here to mention kagi. Very happy user here. The no-spam results make it so much more useful as a tool. Also, "block this site from myresults forever" gives so much more agency to the user than anything Google has release in years. Googles "we know better" just reads as a big middle finger to me.

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

#74

Post by jeffbee »

We have to have this discussion daily, apparently, but nobody, absolutely nobody in this thread and certainly not the article, has established an objective basis for "Google sucks". The most likely alternate theory, which the article doesn't bother discussing, is that Google does not in practice "suck" at all.

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

#75

Post by 93po »

dariusj18 wrote: post #48
SllX wrote: post #11

My standard line on this is that Google today is not as good as Google of (at this point more than) 10 years ago, but it is still the best available option today because nothing is as good as or better than Google of (at this point more than) 10 years ago. That said there have been a stack of new search engine posts on HN in the last few months and I may have to update my priors once I’ve had a chance to actually inv…

Also, the internet is a far better and worse place than it was 10 years ago. So much more content, but astronomically more bad actors.

I think it's also only going to get worse when the amount of bad content and blog spam is 1000 times the ratio it is today due to really human-like AI writing. I am sure Google will find ways to detect this, but it will be a cat and mouse game for decades because at some point we won't be able to tell apart bad, lazy human writing from AI writing.

At some point the internet has to go to a circle of trust model with real identities tied to online content of any sort. I see no other way to curb this pending disaster than being able to block bad actors and bad actors having very limited means to publish under an alias.

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

#76

Post by compiler-guy »

The web itself sucks more and more, and Google results reflect that. Much good discussion migrated to siloed locations like facebook groups. There are thousands of pages of technical content that are barely redone versions of each other. Each SEO'd to within an inch of its life. These are quite similar to the dozens of identical off-brand products one finds on amazon.

I would love to see Google results get better. But the web itself is a mess.

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

#77

Post by Kye »

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…

People said this about pre-Google search engines. Someone will figure out the next PageRank and give us another 10-20 years of useful search.

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

#79

Post by buildbot »

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.)

+1 kagi was the first alternative engine that has passed all of my random tests, mostly weird cameras and python coding searches…

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

#80

Post by thrwawy283 »

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…

You mentioned things I hadn't thought of. Google's Search accomplishes the goals of 10 years ago, but steps no further than that. It treats its power users like kids, and offers no complex filtering to do things like removing search results that require logins. Librarians love when you come to them to specifically refine your search. Google still has the most useful search, but they've taken away methods to get better results. I remember I was pretty upset when i couldn't search for images by exact dimensions anymore. Bing allows this.

Google's product direction has been inching backwards for a decade.

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