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

511–520 of 561 posts

Re: The next Google

#511

Post by scim-knox-twox »

b8 wrote: post #229

Kagi requires for an account to be registered and will charge a monthly rate when it's out of beta, so I don't really think that it'll be a threat to Google.

> I don't really think that it'll be a threat to Google

They don't want to.

https://kagi.com/faq#Google-killer

> We don't want to kill Google :) Google serves a purpose in the world and it did help enable the modern society to exist, with all its marvels and flaws. Heck, it even enables Kagi to exist! > > Think of Kagi as a small, premium brand, providing a very different, tailor-made, search experience.

Re: The next Google

#512

Post by [deleted] »

outloudvi wrote: post #415

Have tried Kagi for a while as a beta user. It generally works fine, but I am just reminded every time when I try to do a search via Private Browsing - and Kagi, a subscription service, will apparently ask me to login - that each of my search history will be able to be linked to an individual. Then it's definitely not what I want.

[deleted]

Re: The next Google

#514

Post by RugnirViking »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #418
nmstoker wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were these high barriers to entry? Not trying to be awkward, but even back in the early days of Netscape, it wasn't like you had to recall any arcane commands to use most search engines. Sure, they all had limitations then, such as not necessarily knowing similar word senses to create more nuanced searches, but that was a fairly level playing field. Is it simply that it was initially a bit obscure and not everyo…

my first site was on geocities i made with a sort of pagebuilder inside yahoo on a crummy hand me down... i didn't know what 'programming' even was. Why is publishing documents so complex now? my site is all html, why not.

there are so many options, many complex, but many too are simple. One of my personal favorites is using github pages, you can host a plaintext html document for free in about 10 minutes (including downloading a text editor and github desktop)

Re: The next Google

#515

Post by bobajeff »

chaostheory wrote: post #344
boomer918 wrote: post #12

These solutions don't answer any of the fundamental problems with Google: - who pays for the service (ads? users pay? Average user will never use a paid service if a free one is available) - how to resist attacks against the algorithm (Google has been fighting spam for decades) - how to personalize without invading privacy, e.g. Google had an option to search through your email in Google search...it's gone now, I won…

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

Lately Google has gotten so bad that I've even occasionally brought up Bing (which I've often referred to as the Zune of search engines) and gotten better results. It's looking more and more to me like Google has stopped trying to improve things and are simply milking their dominance for all it's worth.

Re: The next Google

#516

Post by retube »

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…

100% agree. Success = less configuration, not more.

Re: The next Google

#517

Post by sylware »

mulmen wrote: post #324
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.

Indeed. We live in the eternal September. But to be honest the internet is still the internet. The web still exists. Any lamentation at the loss of the "old" internet is that you don't have more angry uncles spewing political rhetoric on your motorcycle forum. Do you want the unwashed masses in your specialist forums? I certainly don't. Seems to me things are working pretty well. I do worry about the next generation…

It is a bit more complicated than that.

Admninistration web sites are now forcing you to use google(blink/geeko) or apple(webkit) based browsers. Asking nicely to restore interoperability with noscript/basic (x)html browsers does not seem to work, namely keeping the door open to alternatives requiring a reasonable effort of development, and not the army of devs of big tech.

This requires regulation I guess.

Re: The next Google

#518

Post by mbeex »

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…

This is not a binary "the people who don't want" / "the people who do".

The old Google was able to do an exact search using Boolean expressions. Man, I miss that all the time....

It's not rocket science to provide a user interface for this. A combination of GUI configuration, keywords, and specific URLs for these cases would go a long way here without bothering the regular user in the slightest. Yes, it's probably slower than in earlier times, pure search volumina and its handling by AI weighting etc. considered. But there is also a "don't want" on the part of Google and the other players.

Re: The next Google

#519

Post by [deleted] »

ip26 wrote: post #205
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…

Isn’t that called a travel agent?

[deleted]

Re: The next Google

#520

Post by thfuran »

throw8383833jj wrote: post #34

My problem with google is that it often tries to figure out my search intent and then return results accordingly. the attempt might be commendable but for many types of searches they fail miserably. when they misread my search intent, the results are completely awful. and to make matters worse, 95% or more of the web isn't even being shown to users and so I keep getting the same stupid search results: which is fine f…

>I will say, google search is very good at technical searches, that's for sure.

Unless your technical search, for example, contains jargon with a similar spelling to or other sense synonymous with a common term that Google will helpfully also consider to match your query. I think it's actually rather mediocre for technical searches now that they've gone so deep into stemming and such and lessened the ability to use operators to refine queries. And, of course, the lack of support for symbols makes many technical queries extremely difficult.

Post reply on HN