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If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

abhinavsharma.com

101–110 of 471 posts

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

#101

The “google search sucks” rhetoric is getting a bit old. It works really really well and is free. I rarely ever have issues with it. I think it’s just getting trendy to dog on

Only on HN. Virtually none of the "problems" described on HN at the intersection of tech and society are seen as problems out in the real world.

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

#103

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.com does not even load in Firefox with beacon.enabled set to false in about:config.

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

#104

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. Bu…

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

#105
post #61

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.

DuckDuckGo has been good enough for my day-to-day use. I’ll use Google for a few things.

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

#106

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.

I feel this same way about a lot of aspects of Google search.

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

#107
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kagi requires users to sign up (even though it's currently free?) which is 1000x more user-hostile than anything Google does and makes it a nonstarter as far as I'm concerned.

Kagi is intended to be a paid service when it launches. This is something I actively want. It should make them the opposite of user-hostile. Their users will be the source of their revenue so they will need to provide value or lose them. Login is a necessary part of that. I'm happy to take both that inconvenience and the cost.

I used it for awhile and did like it quite a bit - I found myself having a bit of anxiety though worrying if I was going to hit the search limit with my more trivial queries. Google really has us psychologically

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

#109
post #69

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…

3) ban abusive data providers?

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

#110

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 sucks compared to Google from years ago

How much of that is based on general incompetence, SEO gaming, growing complexity of searches or manipulation (e.g. filtering "disinformation")? Or something else.

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