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If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

abhinavsharma.com

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

#111

Post by Melatonic »

Gualdrapo wrote: post #15

I still use it mainly for non "standard" search: - Its location feature is better than DDG or anything else - It has gotten worse a bit, but if I tell it to show me results from Colombia, 95% of the results it will return are from actual websites from Colombia. DDG will throw anything from Latin America, for example. Not to mention the disaster with Bing. - Its image search feature is still more precise than others.…

Generally I have found google to always work the best (location wise) when you just put a zip code at the end of your search query

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

#112

Post by Melatonic »

spiderice wrote: post #29
disintegore wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still get Google results in the end, which are growing more full of blogspam and affiliate link farms every year.

Google results are the one thing keeping me on Google. Not sure why getting the almost indisputably best results would be bad. Even if they are getting worse, they're still miles ahead of anyone else. I've been waiting for a Kagi invite for a while because I've heard good things on HN about it. Finally got one a couple weeks ago. Finally switched off of it and back to Google yesterday. The results weren't even in the…

What kind of stuff did you have trouble with? I have not used Kagi in a bit but I found it pretty solid

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

#114

Post by elevaet »

thereare5lights wrote: post #81
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 sucks compared to Google from years ago. Came here to write exactly that Why are we still using it? There's nothing better out there.

I've been starting to use kagi for search. I'm still using google by default, but when I get a screen full of ads and clickbait articles I turn to kagi and it's almost always better.

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

#116

Post by kaan0200 »

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.

Neeva has a free tier (with only access to the search engine, so people can still test the search aspect), but when you pay for it now you ALSO get LastPass premium and Bitdefender VPN Premium as well, along with all their integrations into your system.

If you trust these people are doing what they say, it's a pretty good deal for securing your internet spaces and trying to get away from google, imo.

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

#117

Post by pixl97 »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #101
mountainriver wrote: post #78

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.

Oh, they are all the time, but they are posted here 5 to 10 years before we see them crop up in the world outside of here.

"DRM bad" was common here long before the days people were figuring out that getting their blue ray player working with their TV was going to be a pain in the ass.

Just wait and a few more years and it will be mainstream that Google actually sucks.

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

#118

Post by elevaet »

pixl97 wrote: post #109
RC_ITR wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

How would that even work? Define the border between SEO and abuse.

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

#120

Post by RC_ITR »

pixl97 wrote: post #109
RC_ITR wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well let's make this real.

Sites with people hired to optimize the robots.txt file are ranked higher than those without. If we ban all websites that hire people to optimize their robots.txt, then a lot of the web isn't indexed and the search results suffer.

Or if we ban every creator on tik tok who posts a lot of text in a short video, then a lot of creators are going to be de-platformed and moved elsewhere.

The point of what I wrote is that 'humans are really god at following rules, so much so that they often are able to manipulate rules to their advantage, without breaking said rules.

That's why this is such a hard problem to counter.

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