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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?

#171

Post by lazide »

Barrin92 wrote: post #169
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…

Am I the only person on earth who hasn't noticed any decline in Google results that everyone keeps talking about? To me it seems like people conflate the fact that there is now significantly more stuff on the internet (what's the data volume today compared to 2010, 100x? 1000x?) than there was years ago with the performance of search engines. People say they now have to append "reddit" to their search and they didn't…

Yes. There is massively more spam, and they’ve made it do a lot less direct search matching (many results don’t include the actual word that matters for instance)

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

#172

Post by google234123 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #169
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…

Am I the only person on earth who hasn't noticed any decline in Google results that everyone keeps talking about? To me it seems like people conflate the fact that there is now significantly more stuff on the internet (what's the data volume today compared to 2010, 100x? 1000x?) than there was years ago with the performance of search engines. People say they now have to append "reddit" to their search and they didn't…

I’ve noticed more spam and shit sites but I’m not sure if that’s entirely googles fault. There might just be 1000x more spam sites now then a few years ago.

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

#173

Post by eevilspock »

high_pathetic wrote: post #157

That's two blanket statements in one headline. Google search is fast, accurate enough for the most users, very widely adopted. GMail is fast, good with SPAM, free. Google has some practices that might be considered as evil but this affects a relatively narrow list of people, it definitely doesn't "suck" for everyone. Lotus Notes, on the hand...

It is far, far, FAR from free.

Huge social costs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10047706

Huge economic costs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237

Its amoral/cynical/evil practices and business model affect everyone.

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

#174

Post by aghilmort »

bsder wrote: post #45
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…

> Honestly I think people are completely underestimating the difficulty of a good search engine. No, they are underestimating the difficulty of funding a good search engine. I liked the runnaroo search very much as did several of my friends. The guy who ran it couldn't fund it. He shut it down. Altavista (Yeah, that far back) had a nice feature where it would draw a cluster graph of your search results. So, if you se…

building Breeze, which does pretty much that minus the cool UI angle, and yeah, only way for it to work at scale is premium like neeva, kagi, etc.

we started out with topics and then moved to web, and are now folding topics into the web search experience, it's really hard stuff to get right

our first main filter was blogs, which is getting renamed to posts for a mix of reasons, adding forums shortly, along with other more specific topics

re: https://breezethat.com/ -- & better on laptop / desktop atm, premium version will be ad-free

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

#175

Post by AniseAbyss »

Barrin92 wrote: post #169
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…

Am I the only person on earth who hasn't noticed any decline in Google results that everyone keeps talking about? To me it seems like people conflate the fact that there is now significantly more stuff on the internet (what's the data volume today compared to 2010, 100x? 1000x?) than there was years ago with the performance of search engines. People say they now have to append "reddit" to their search and they didn't…

Honestly I use startpage and I'm blocking ads so aggressively I barely know what Google search is supposed to look like.

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

#176

Post by jessriedel »

RC_ITR wrote: post #69
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…

Honest question: what else besides web search has followed this progression?

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

#177

Post by massysett »

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

I don’t know what people are expecting of Google. I use it like the Yellow Pages was thirty years ago. I use it to find answers to interesting but ultimately inconsequential questions, like “when is Joe Biden’s birthday?” I crank computer error messages into it.

Google was never good for much else. Generating good content is expensive, so most of it is not on the free Web. Never has been. People are expecting it to provide buying advice, or intelligent counsel for their problems, or wisdom from experts. Google was never good for that.

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

#178

Post by narrator »

ipunchghosts wrote: post #124

I use yandex

Yandex is nice because it acts like a normal search engine on controversial topics. Google search results are heavily curated on any politically controversial topic. This is all new since 2016, and especially the last 2 years. This is why forums are downranked. Someone could post wrongthink on a forum and google automatically identifies and downranks sites with wrongthink.

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

#179

Post by glenstein »

asiachick wrote: post #164
moistly wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search isn’t Google’s moneymaker, advertising is. And those shitty SEO’d sites are choc-a-bloc with advertising. Google has little incentive to downrank them.

Google loses if people stop using it. Google has every incentive to downrank them.

Google has incentives to degrade the quality of search results for the benefit of its profitability, up to the extent that is able to without turning away too many users.

I think it's more like that rather than an either/or.

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

#180

Post by firecall »

google234123 wrote: post #172
Barrin92 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only person on earth who hasn't noticed any decline in Google results that everyone keeps talking about? To me it seems like people conflate the fact that there is now significantly more stuff on the internet (what's the data volume today compared to 2010, 100x? 1000x?) than there was years ago with the performance of search engines. People say they now have to append "reddit" to their search and they didn't…

I’ve noticed more spam and shit sites but I’m not sure if that’s entirely googles fault. There might just be 1000x more spam sites now then a few years ago.

This is super useful: https://github.com/quenhus/uBlock-Origin-dev-filter

Removes sites that copy SO answers etc...

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