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The next Google

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Re: The next Google

#481

Post by scim-knox-twox »

Ennea wrote: post #257
richardsocher wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We found similar issues at https://you.com a while back. We just had to be good for more query families. Now we have both the walmart locations in a map app, eg https://you.com/search?q=walmart and coding related useful results, eg. https://you.com/search?q=how%20do%20I%20find%20all%20files%2... or https://you.com/search?q=pyspark%20filter%20array%20element

Too bad you.com does not work in Firefox with the "beacon" function disabled (beacon.enabled set to false in about:config).

I never even tried you.com because I see nothing (I don't enable JS for sites I don't trust).

Re: The next Google

#482

Post by account42 »

manigandham wrote: post #401
user3939382 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

What exactly is Google supposed to do here? They're returning what's available. Beyond that it goes from search engine to active curation and recommendation - and they are actively moving in that direction by replacing results with "answers", which I find to be much worse.

They could stop encouraging SEO.

They could start penalizing sites that show different things to googlebot and a real browser again.

The could do a better job penalizing sites that just copy content from other sites.

They could penalize ad-laden sites.

They could stop prioritizing youtube results over text content.

They could allow you to blacklist sites again.

They could do so many things.

None of this is curation, put priorization of search result is exactly what a search engine does.

Re: The next Google

#483

Post by scim-knox-twox »

time_to_smile wrote: post #165
sanxiyn wrote: post #22

Earlier 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.

Another important feature of Kagi that I'm paying close attention to is: they are currently privately bootstrapped as far as funding goes. To me the fact that Kagi is not currently VC funded is huge for me as far as adoption. Every customer facing VC funded startup I've worked at inevitably starts to institute increasingly anti-user practices while grinning and talking about "customer first!" I know it's a huge ask,…

Yes, I noticed this too.

I'm afraid what happens to 1Password since they get big funding recently.

Re: The next Google

#484

Post by dusted »

The search engine I want is the one that actually searches for the text I input into it, instead of "trying to find the most relevant" (aka "whatever is cached at the moment)

Re: The next Google

#485

Post by dusted »

mostlysimilar wrote: post #74
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…

> 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…

Indeed, google has become extremely good at answering simple questions, and extremely poor at finding textual information on the world wide web.

Re: The next Google

#486

Post by ninth_ant »

jimmygrapes wrote: post #198
chrisshroba wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find reddit works remarkably well for this. I've gotten great actionable recommendations within an hour or two for: - good coffeeshops - tacos - Korean grocery stores - places that have traditional style al pastor tacos - finding a specific coffee brand at a local grocery store - finding EDM songs similar to a particular song (dullscythe) - hot chicken - canolis and a bunch more similar things. I would think if you…

I have found that this only works if you take recommendations with the understanding that you're almost always getting "the reddit answer". Every sub has theirs, and their reasoning might be because they agree with some entirely unrelated thing, and have bonded over that to the point that other recommendations between each other are heavily weighted and rapidly creates a "go to" response. Example: check r/sandiego fo…

So your observation is spot-on, that a subreddit community will produce unbalanced opinions due to groupthink. Likely true of any active community forum that would give recommendations such as this.

However, if I was looking for recommendations about a good taco place when visiting San Diego, I would bet that the groupthink recommendations of an active San Diego subreddit would be vastly superior to what you'd get on Google.

Unfortunately, this points to gamification of reddit recommendations as being a major target for the same folks wrecking web search results with their SEO blogspam garbage.

Re: The next Google

#487

Post by theaeolist »

mostlysimilar wrote: post #74
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…

> 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…

Maybe Google should start a new thing, a "search engine", which actually searches (rather then guess, anticipate, and interpret).

Re: The next Google

#489

Post by wodenokoto »

SahAssar wrote: post #320
legohead wrote: post #98

I just went on a mini vacation to Vegas, and was thinking how nice it would be to just call up someone and ask for some simple advice. I did a bunch of online research before I booked things, but man was it painful. There are so many copy-cat blogs who just throw together a bunch of basic information with no real research done in order to get those clicks/adwords. For example: best hotel pool in vegas. Seems simple e…

> For example: best hotel pool in vegas. I get what you're saying but, does anyone really need the "best" here? why not "good" or "great"?

You get the same crap results with those searches.

All review site have become some version of "link to amazon and include their description as your in detail review"

Re: The next Google

#490

Post by chaostheory »

prawn wrote: post #462
chaostheory wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding on to this, customization is nice but customization is not why DuckDuckGo isn't as good as Google. The reason nothing is as good as Google is because Google indexes way more content than every other service that I'm aware of

Is that the key though? There's a lot of stuff I'd be quite happy if they didn't index!

Imo Yes, because that’s the main difference between Google search and everyone else. Out index Google, and it’s possible to beat.

That said, I do like the feature of ignoring entire domains. Google used to allow that

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