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Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

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Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#101

Post by basch »

massysett wrote: post #53
RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #12

The gaming of SEO has been quietly destroying the utility of search writ large as a mechanism for quite a while. Over the last year, its become palpable. Google has such utility in this regard that in some cases, a hallucinating lie-machine offers better answer than an index of what information is available on the internet. This issue with with Googles failure to respond to the deluge of SEO driven content in their s…

I see this sort of comment a lot, and I honestly don't know what it's talking about. What are people expecting out of Google that it's not delivering? It can only index stuff that's on the Web. Stuff on the Web is, contrary to what is popularly asserted, only a tiny fraction of all human knowledge. I think people are forgetting how bad search was before Google. Google drove Web directories to extinction. Remember Yah…

The point of google was to RANK content on the web, and surface the BEST content to the top. In that regard it has failed, and the expectation is for them to correct the problem and return to delivering good content first.

It's not that the content doesn't exist or isn't indexed, its that its been drowned out by noise. Sifting through noise better was the entire reason google took off from more standard crawlers. It now returns results worse than crawlers from the previous era.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#102

Post by Kwpolska »

qrio2 wrote: post #79
massysett wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this sort of comment a lot, and I honestly don't know what it's talking about. What are people expecting out of Google that it's not delivering? It can only index stuff that's on the Web. Stuff on the Web is, contrary to what is popularly asserted, only a tiny fraction of all human knowledge. I think people are forgetting how bad search was before Google. Google drove Web directories to extinction. Remember Yah…

Things that i *know* were parts of the internet, that I could find via google 5-10 years ago are no longer possible to find. I get single page search results sometimes, with not even the capability to keep browsing 'more' pages to see things that may be tangentially related. Google has just decided to not show them at all. Remember when the bottom of the page was "Goooooooooooooooogle" and you could click each "o" to…

> Remember when the bottom of the page was "Goooooooooooooooogle" and you could click each "o" to go to that page? Haven't seen that in a while, right?

That’s still a thing, although it seems they’re A/B testing its removal. I just opened a private tab (as I always do) and got a boring "More results" button, but I tried another browser (also with a private tab) and got the classic pagination.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#103

Post by chem83 »

Microsoft's insistence on reusing the bing brand and website is baffling to me. No one wants to use that shit, but in classical Microsoft fashion, they're too attached to old decisions. What a missed opportunity to do like they did with IE and kill it in favor or something new and fresh.

Ultimately, Microsoft will make it easier for Google to catch up because its internal culture is and will continue to be unchanged, no matter how much technology they inject from OpenAI. Make no mistake, behind the shiny PR, it's still the messy Bing AI organization, the demoralized Microsoft Research organization and good ol' Microsoft.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#105

Post by kogus »

qrio2 wrote: post #79
massysett wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this sort of comment a lot, and I honestly don't know what it's talking about. What are people expecting out of Google that it's not delivering? It can only index stuff that's on the Web. Stuff on the Web is, contrary to what is popularly asserted, only a tiny fraction of all human knowledge. I think people are forgetting how bad search was before Google. Google drove Web directories to extinction. Remember Yah…

Things that i *know* were parts of the internet, that I could find via google 5-10 years ago are no longer possible to find. I get single page search results sometimes, with not even the capability to keep browsing 'more' pages to see things that may be tangentially related. Google has just decided to not show them at all. Remember when the bottom of the page was "Goooooooooooooooogle" and you could click each "o" to…

I just checked and sure enough, the clickable Goooooooooogle is still there at the bottom of search results, with ten clickable "o"s.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#106

Post by JohnFen »

massysett wrote: post #53
RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #12

The gaming of SEO has been quietly destroying the utility of search writ large as a mechanism for quite a while. Over the last year, its become palpable. Google has such utility in this regard that in some cases, a hallucinating lie-machine offers better answer than an index of what information is available on the internet. This issue with with Googles failure to respond to the deluge of SEO driven content in their s…

I see this sort of comment a lot, and I honestly don't know what it's talking about. What are people expecting out of Google that it's not delivering? It can only index stuff that's on the Web. Stuff on the Web is, contrary to what is popularly asserted, only a tiny fraction of all human knowledge. I think people are forgetting how bad search was before Google. Google drove Web directories to extinction. Remember Yah…

> What are people expecting out of Google that it's not delivering?

Relevant search results that aren't just marketing sites or the big websites.

> It can only index stuff that's on the Web.

And much of it isn't really exposed by Google search.

> I view Google as the yellow pages. It works well for that

It used to. For me, it stopped working well for that a few years ago and has been getting steadily worse ever since.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#107

Post by basch »

gipp wrote: post #95
luckylion wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What are people expecting out of Google that it's not delivering? Not optimize for "most documents indexed" but "highest quality of results". One of them encourages adding spam to their index, the other encourages removing spam from their index.

There are giant teams of people at Google whose only job is trying to define things like "spam" and "seo abuse" more precisely in more diverse contexts. There are equally large armies of people outside of it trying to outwit the first group and find more and more elaborate loopholes and workarounds. HN is constantly pushing this notion that "spam" is some well-defined, solvable problem, so obviously Google wants it.…

Their giant teams are an organizational failure then.

Product reviews alone, whether it is enterprise software or sports clothing should be something that they can easily comb through by hand, as humans, and uprank sites that are putting out more than affiliate link assemblies.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#108

Post by lyu07282 »

josefresco wrote: post #22

Let us think about the defaults in our life: Windows: Most use Chrome (Google default), the rest use Edge (Bing default). MacOS: Safari (Google default) and Chrome (Google default) Android: Chrome (Google default) iOS: Safari (Google default) So it looks like the only vulnerability here would be iOS and then possibly PC/MacOS if enough users switch their browser.

you should also consider that Google is/was the best search engine around so it makes sense as a default, sure they pay to be the default and most people never change defaults. But if you are making a phone you might just really actually care about people having a good experience with your phone.

(and its not like Microsoft couldn't pay them either anyway)

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#109

Post by jeffbee »

qrio2 wrote: post #79
massysett wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this sort of comment a lot, and I honestly don't know what it's talking about. What are people expecting out of Google that it's not delivering? It can only index stuff that's on the Web. Stuff on the Web is, contrary to what is popularly asserted, only a tiny fraction of all human knowledge. I think people are forgetting how bad search was before Google. Google drove Web directories to extinction. Remember Yah…

Things that i *know* were parts of the internet, that I could find via google 5-10 years ago are no longer possible to find. I get single page search results sometimes, with not even the capability to keep browsing 'more' pages to see things that may be tangentially related. Google has just decided to not show them at all. Remember when the bottom of the page was "Goooooooooooooooogle" and you could click each "o" to…

What makes you think these origins still exist? Google is not going to direct you to a page that can't be reached, even if we assume that your memory is accurate and the page existed 10 years ago.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#110

Post by stephc_int13 »

Google is already a zombie company, and has been for some time, still insanely rich and powerful, but they're not cool anymore and I think they could be replaced very easily.

Large corporations can seemingly stay alive and kicking for a long time after their death. Nokia, Kodak, Palm, RIM just to name a few.

I've witnessed the demise of Palm, then Nokia and RIM, following similar patterns, when they start reacting it is already over.

RIP Google.

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