[deleted]
The next Google
181–190 of 561 posts
Re: The next Google
#182Google can be the next Google if they just stopped being evil for a second: 1. Let me ban domains like pinterest, quora, stackoverflow clones, stock image sites, etc without requiring a chrome extension. 2. Do what I ask it to do. Don't be too smart. Bring back the plus sign, minus sign, double quotes, tilde which have been deprecated over these years and stop polluting the results with what it thinks I want. 3. A ne…
An easy way to personally blacklist (and a bare minimum on/off switch if you need to toggle it) would make me so damn happy.
Why should I be forced to look at a page full of purple links when searching for some specific programming topic? It feels like there's a bunch of potentially-fake developer blogs that copy/paste from Azure documentation, without adding anything novel.
Re: The next Google
#183I think 'more customization' which is a theme with a lot of these alternatives is a fundamental dead end. I don't know where this persistent myth comes from that people love choice and tinkering, because they clearly don't. There's a huge cost associated with having to make choices, and one feature of successful modern apps is that they're frictionless. That's why TikTok is so successful. There's no login, no user ch…
>I don't know where this persistent myth comes from that people love choice and tinkering, because they clearly don't. People want to accomplish stuff, this means they need tools to do stuff and if a tool can be customized to do the stuff faster or better people want the customization. At my job we have paying users that requests features that indeed are work related(not moving shit around). I know GNOME-minded peopl…
Because most users would rather not have to customize anything. It's funny that your example is gnome, as most users are not tinkerers and would never use Linux on the desktop unless it were made so simple that (again) they would not have to customize anything.
Obviously there are exceptions, and some tools are so advanced that it's necessary to be able to customize them. No argument from me there. But for most tools, and most users, there's just no hunger for customization. Almost nobody wants to have to manage an array of options to do a web search.
Re: The next Google
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Raising the cost of spam would be a good first step. At the moment, spamming Google seems to be trivial with no long-term penalties if you get caught doing something nasty. A simple rule (manually enforced on a case-by-case basis) that would ban your brand/domain for a year if you get caught breaking the rules would get Pinterest into compliance from day 1 for example. Using ads/analytics/affiliate links as a negativ…
This would be easily exploitable by a competitor. For example, search engines (used to) rank back links - that is other domains pointing to your domain. Some bad actors took advantage of this by creating rings of sites that voted each other up. Google responded by punishing the behavior. Then, competitors started taking advantage of this punishment by creating a network of sites that backlinked to a competitor, so th…
Agreed, I'm not saying this is the end-game or that it will be perfect. But a simple rule (that's actually enforced) saying that you are forbidden to serve a different experience to the Google bot vs a normal visitor would take care of Pinterest for example, and they're not even doing that despite it being a major complaint especially in tech-circles where Googlers no doubt lurk.
Re: The next Google
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a simple box where you put a question in and it gives you answers Google is very good at this, but this is exactly what I _don't_ want in the "Next Google". I want a _search engine_ for the web, not an answers engine that tries to know what I want better than I do. Search the web. Give me links to websites. This seems obvious to me, but everyone is trying to be like Google. I'm convinced the death of the web and in…
The death of the web is because most people don't want what you want. They don't mind walled gardens, so long as they are easy to use and have the content and connections that they want to see. The audience of HN is extremely skewed towards preferring systems that allow tinkering but that's not what the market wants.
What the market has produced is not ipso facto what the people want. The market is simultaneously optimizing many things. Walled gardens are much better explained by companies benefitting from not having to allow their competitors access to their customers than by "being what the people want".
Re: The next Google
#186I think 'more customization' which is a theme with a lot of these alternatives is a fundamental dead end. I don't know where this persistent myth comes from that people love choice and tinkering, because they clearly don't. There's a huge cost associated with having to make choices, and one feature of successful modern apps is that they're frictionless. That's why TikTok is so successful. There's no login, no user ch…
> a simple box where you put a question in and it gives you answers Google is very good at this, but this is exactly what I _don't_ want in the "Next Google". I want a _search engine_ for the web, not an answers engine that tries to know what I want better than I do. Search the web. Give me links to websites. This seems obvious to me, but everyone is trying to be like Google. I'm convinced the death of the web and in…
> but this is exactly what I _don't_ want in the "Next Google"
You’re in the small minority. You’re a power user that thinks like a software engineer, and likes to deal with data in lists.
Most users are completely happy that Google tries to answer their questions and (usually) provides the right answer front and center.
Re: The next Google
#187I think 'more customization' which is a theme with a lot of these alternatives is a fundamental dead end. I don't know where this persistent myth comes from that people love choice and tinkering, because they clearly don't. There's a huge cost associated with having to make choices, and one feature of successful modern apps is that they're frictionless. That's why TikTok is so successful. There's no login, no user ch…
There's a certain type of person who loves buttons and knobs. They're also the same sort of person who might decide to make a new search engine. But yeah, more knobs is definitely not something the market is asking for.
I remember when the same thing was said about Apple's reductionist philosophy: "The market doesn't demand stuff you can't configure to your needs".
Turns out the market doesn't know what it wants until market participants see what is being offered.
Re: The next Google
#188I think 'more customization' which is a theme with a lot of these alternatives is a fundamental dead end. I don't know where this persistent myth comes from that people love choice and tinkering, because they clearly don't. There's a huge cost associated with having to make choices, and one feature of successful modern apps is that they're frictionless. That's why TikTok is so successful. There's no login, no user ch…
It's a dead end if you are an ads business obsessed with reaching billions of eyeballs that don't want to spend any of their attention.
It is not a dead end if you're building a tool.
Re: The next Google
#189I think 'more customization' which is a theme with a lot of these alternatives is a fundamental dead end. I don't know where this persistent myth comes from that people love choice and tinkering, because they clearly don't. There's a huge cost associated with having to make choices, and one feature of successful modern apps is that they're frictionless. That's why TikTok is so successful. There's no login, no user ch…
> That's why TikTok is so successful.
More likely, it exploits human's cognitive weaknesses successfully with a simple way. It learns how how people get their dopamine dose. And there is no going back. You need more and more, more extreme content. More polarization. All you need to do is to open app and get that dose. Is it the same for search engine?
And people make more crazy stuff to get views. How this ends? Not well, probably.
Re: The next Google
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kagi is "users pay". Yes, average users won't pay, but I don't see how that matters to me as a Kagi user.
I guess it depends on whether you consider "The Next Google" to imply that it becomes a the dominant company in the space, used by every "average user", or if it's enough to be a niche solution for highly technical users who prefer it to Google.
So the question will be "Will the average user prefer to feed on free junk food when healthy food is ten bucks a month?"
Chances are there will be both.