Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The next Google

dkb.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 561 posts

Re: The next Google

#351

Post by randmeerkat »

baxtr wrote: post #225
idiotsecant wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This. People don't realize that the early web was elitist. Now, the entire population is online. And, as you said, most people simply don't care about the stuff we care about. That's also why "Google's search results are soo bad." They're not. For the bulk of Google's visitors, they're good enough.

> That's also why "Google's search results are soo bad." They're not. For the bulk of Google's visitors, they're good enough.

I’m sure that’s what Yahoo! used to think about Google before Google replaced it.

Re: The next Google

#352

Post by tomatowurst »

The perfect search engine would be powered by humans with a search engine. Google is fantastic but there is no human understanding of the needs and wants that can be conveyed through series of keywords.

For example when I type "best humidifiers" I want a suggestion that is ideally based on accurate anecdotes of people who've experienced a brand in a variety of context and edge cases.

What google gives me is a cnet article listing Top 10 in 20XX. This is why I add reddit to the end of the search query now.

Re: The next Google

#353

Post by bottled_poe »

user3939382 wrote: post #332
baxtr wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. People don't realize that the early web was elitist. Now, the entire population is online. And, as you said, most people simply don't care about the stuff we care about. That's also why "Google's search results are soo bad." They're not. For the bulk of Google's visitors, they're good enough.

> For the bulk of Google's visitors, they're good enough I'm not sure that's true. Just to pick an example, basically any type of product search now leads to auto-generated spam/borderline-spam websites that scrape reviews from Amazon, which are themselves often fraudulent. I guess you could say that's "good enough" but only in the sense that someone being scammed at some point consents to something that makes them a…

The scammers are aware of this too, and many online forums are filled with astroturfers.

Re: The next Google

#354

Post by enos_feedler »

idiotsecant wrote: post #100
mostlysimilar wrote: post #74

Earlier 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.

I think you’ve touched on an interesting point here with respect to connection. Content naturally lives inside a walled garden and is often created there whether by users or professional studios. Users expect and dont care about this. However _connection_ is naturally between things and is a source of user friction when things dont connect well together.

Re: The next Google

#355

Post by Vixel »

Barrin92 wrote: post #45

I 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…

Couldn't agree more. For the average person outside of our bubble, google "just works". They don't give a fuck about customization or the occasional ads. There are still plenty of people who click on the sponsored links without even knowing, or caring, that they are ads.

Re: The next Google

#356

Post by technothrasher »

redmen wrote: post #340
baxtr wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. People don't realize that the early web was elitist. Now, the entire population is online. And, as you said, most people simply don't care about the stuff we care about. That's also why "Google's search results are soo bad." They're not. For the bulk of Google's visitors, they're good enough.

It's not true I don't think. Anyone I watch older than 50 years old is constantly frustrated by google, they just don't know what's good, what's not. I think they use it because it's the "norm" and that is the only reason. And as far as everyone else.. I have no idea to be quite honest. I have a fairly big handful of non-techie friends who think google sucks but is good enough so there is no real incentive to change.…

> Anyone I watch older than 50 years old

Hey, now wait a second there, you young whipper-snapper. I'm sitting here reading HN while I install Debian on an XCP-ng VM, and I hear I can't understand whether Google results are good or not? There are plenty of us over 50 that actually lived the early internet and watched it first-hand transform into what it is today.

Re: The next Google

#357

Post by redmen »

technothrasher wrote: post #356
redmen wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not true I don't think. Anyone I watch older than 50 years old is constantly frustrated by google, they just don't know what's good, what's not. I think they use it because it's the "norm" and that is the only reason. And as far as everyone else.. I have no idea to be quite honest. I have a fairly big handful of non-techie friends who think google sucks but is good enough so there is no real incentive to change.…

> Anyone I watch older than 50 years old Hey, now wait a second there, you young whipper-snapper. I'm sitting here reading HN while I install Debian on an XCP-ng VM, and I hear I can't understand whether Google results are good or not? There are plenty of us over 50 that actually lived the early internet and watched it first-hand transform into what it is today.

I meant 60 ;)

Re: The next Google

#359

Post by agencies »

masswerk wrote: post #277

I'd like my search engine to be not too intelligent. Sometimes, humans suppose to know what they are meaning. So - optional verbatim and prioritized terms (like Google once did it) - optional logical operators (and, or) - a separate input box for context (either, specific terms like "product", "shopping", "legal", or some assorted terms to indicate a field of meaning and/or associated concepts, time span, etc) It's t…

Can you describe how context would work differently than additional search terms?

Re: The next Google

#360

Post by gabrielhidasy »

KarlKemp wrote: post #220
simion314 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

MacOS is the perfect example: it's both easy to use and the preferred choice by many professionals. "Hold on", you say, "professionals want options , like user-expandable RAM etc". No, that's the misconception about the concept of a "professional". Unless you are a hardware engineer, tinkering with your notebook's internals is the absolute opposite of professionalism, its either a completely misguided waste of time a…

What? Professionals customize their workspace to make it more efficient all the time.

Just that exactly is the workspace changes a lot, the hardware internals are hardly ever a consideration for any professional, it's easier to just buy something that works well from the start (and hardware costs peanuts).

Post reply on HN