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Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google

theatlantic.com

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Re: Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google

#91

Post by jroseattle »

With the "old" Google, a search made me feel as though I'd stepped into the potential realm of answers to my query. The most relevant, to me, was the stuff that mapped to my query the best -- nothing more, but nothing less.

Now, I feel like I'm living in the law of averages. I'm not interested in the average; I want the top of the scale. I really do not want social and local and all the other unknown contexts involved in giving me what's right "for me". With all the contextual crap, I feel like now I get the "less".

I wish they let me have the option of turning it all off, and just going with content-based search. Of course, they have to filter out the crap that's being generated to game their search index, but outside of that -- give me what the web has.

Re: Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google

#92

Post by rieter »

tripzilch wrote: post #87
robrenaud wrote: post #14

> It isn't that anymore, though. Searches are geospecific and social network-dependent. All of which is fine and useful, but that's not what made us love Google's search engine. What makes you love Google is Google giving you the right answer. If you live in the US, do a google search for dmv. Did it pull the one from your state? Do you really want an averaged across all searchers answer? California is probably the s…

> What makes you love Google is Google giving you the right answer. No it's not. What I loved about Google is giving me the ability to search the web . If my answer wasn't on the first page (or even the second), I'd refine my query until I would get it. Which was easy because Google was very deterministic, just your basic "AND" keyword search engine. Try a few synonyms maybe, different angle, synecdochical approach[1…

Try the literal search feature on Google.

Re: Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google

#93

Post by amorphid »

jroseattle wrote: post #91

With the "old" Google, a search made me feel as though I'd stepped into the potential realm of answers to my query. The most relevant, to me, was the stuff that mapped to my query the best -- nothing more, but nothing less. Now, I feel like I'm living in the law of averages. I'm not interested in the average; I want the top of the scale. I really do not want social and local and all the other unknown contexts involve…

You can get the unpersonalized version when needed. Simply log out of your Google account. Yoi can use a different browser, too.

Re: Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google

#94

Post by raldi »

tripzilch wrote: post #87
robrenaud wrote: post #14

> It isn't that anymore, though. Searches are geospecific and social network-dependent. All of which is fine and useful, but that's not what made us love Google's search engine. What makes you love Google is Google giving you the right answer. If you live in the US, do a google search for dmv. Did it pull the one from your state? Do you really want an averaged across all searchers answer? California is probably the s…

> What makes you love Google is Google giving you the right answer. No it's not. What I loved about Google is giving me the ability to search the web . If my answer wasn't on the first page (or even the second), I'd refine my query until I would get it. Which was easy because Google was very deterministic, just your basic "AND" keyword search engine. Try a few synonyms maybe, different angle, synecdochical approach[1…

Do you have an example of a search that doesn't currently find good results, but you suspect it would work if Google worked the way it used to?

Re: Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google

#95

Post by modeless »

davemel37 wrote: post #27

this is really interesting. What People WANT and what they THINK they want are two different things...How people define and Perceive SEARCH and how they use search are two different things. I think Google is facing a SELF-DEFEATING reality that as they serve people with better results, they erode the perception of their brand in peoples eyes. There is clearly an incongruity between what people "THINK" they want from…

This is more insightful than the article. The problem isn't optimizing for the "community" as the article seems to think. The problem really is that what people think they want and what they actually want are opposed. Facebook faces the same problem.

I think the unfortunate endgame here is legislation that will require what people think they want (e.g. privacy, absolute control) at the expense of some things they actually want (e.g. frictionless social interaction, simplicity).

(To forestall some argument: Yes, I realize that privacy/social interaction and control/simplicity are not always mutually exclusive. However, there are cases where they interfere with each other, which requires compromise.)

Re: Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google

#96

Post by tripzilch »

rieter wrote: post #92
tripzilch wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What makes you love Google is Google giving you the right answer. No it's not. What I loved about Google is giving me the ability to search the web . If my answer wasn't on the first page (or even the second), I'd refine my query until I would get it. Which was easy because Google was very deterministic, just your basic "AND" keyword search engine. Try a few synonyms maybe, different angle, synecdochical approach[1…

Try the literal search feature on Google.

You mean this one? http://googlesystem.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/google-verbatim.h...

Yeah I'll investigate that tomorrow.

Re: Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google

#97

Post by jaredmck »

moultano wrote: post #76
brudgers wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Think of it as having poor proxies for quality" I think of it as good proxies for revenue. It just makes more business sense, and seems more in line with the fiduciary responsibilities of Google's board in regard to Google's stock holders. And that's why I don't doubt your statements that the algorithm doesn't do this or that. There are proxies. If Billy Beene could do it a decade ago in Oakland, it is hard to see…

Ranking tries to make money by returning good search results so that people use Google. Ads tries to make money by showing good ads so that people click on them. Ranking only cares about revenue in that they want to make a product worth using. Look, I've worked in search at Google for over 5 years. I know all of the signals that determine how results are ranked and most of the details about how they are used. I know…

You could actually show us what goes into the rankings for [weather]. Until then, some will be cynical, whether you think it's warranted or not from the inside.

Re: Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google

#98

Post by tripzilch »

raldi wrote: post #94
tripzilch wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What makes you love Google is Google giving you the right answer. No it's not. What I loved about Google is giving me the ability to search the web . If my answer wasn't on the first page (or even the second), I'd refine my query until I would get it. Which was easy because Google was very deterministic, just your basic "AND" keyword search engine. Try a few synonyms maybe, different angle, synecdochical approach[1…

Do you have an example of a search that doesn't currently find good results, but you suspect it would work if Google worked the way it used to?

That's a rather difficult question to answer. I usually don't remember what I've searched for recently. I'm just relating my general impression, which has gotten much much worse over the past year.

Really it's hard to say because 9 times out of 10 it works fine. Probably even more. Because most of my queries are simple ones. I'd have to go dig through my browsing history, it'd take a lot of effort. I did it once, when Matt Cutts asked a similar question, but right now it's rather late here so I hope you can excuse me :)

One thing I can say, I have tried to diversify my usage of Search Engines in the past, to not just use Google but also Yahoo, Bing, and others. Even changed my default search engine sometimes. But it never stuck. Google just was too good--its speed was a big factor btw, even when the results weren't great, the fact that you could quickly try different queries made up for it. But since a couple of months I find myself more and more going for DDG at the first query--also because if DDG doesn't have my answer it has a convenient link to Google to retry, if Google would have the same I might even still use Google with DDG as a fallback instead :)

Another tweak I did was disable Javascript on the Google result pages. There are a lot of shortcut keys I use in Opera all the time and Google's persistent autofocus was really getting in the way. Especially with the instant-refresh feature, your whole results would change just because you pressed some shortcut key even though the input box wasn't even focused!

Re: Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google

#99

Post by thisisnotatest »

loverobots wrote: post #53
spc476 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did a Google search for "dmv". The first result, an ad, is for Florida, where I live. The next three non-ad based results are for California, Virginia and New York. The fourth (and on) non-ad results are for Florida. A Google search for "florida dmv" returned Florida-based results. What I am tired of seeing are Eames chair ads all over the place. Do one search for Eames chairs, and click on one paid result, and now…

The first result, an ad, is for Florida, where I live. The next three non-ad based results are for California, Virginia and New York. The fourth (and on) non-ad results are for Florida. So you click on the relevant link ("happened" to be an ad,) as the Stanford MBAs high five each other at Googleplex. I remember reading a very interesting comment about the incentives of providing the best results and ad revenue. It's…

No.

I work on Search Quality at Google. We have a firewall between Search Quality and Ads. We don't answer to Ads. Revenue is just not my team's problem. We come into work every day and look at our search results and try to get the most relevant answers ranked as #1, #2, etc. I never think about the impact of my ranking improvements on ads. I've been personally involved in dozens of changes, and I've never once heard anyone argue for or against releasing a change because of ads.

I can understand why someone might be mistrustful because of the apparent incentive to sandbag the algorithmic results. But Google has the long-term view: if we can keep satisfying our users' needs, the revenue will follow.

Re: Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google

#100

Post by le_isms »

loganfrederick wrote: post #33
JoshTriplett wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you live in the US, do a google search for dmv. First of all, no, it doesn't give me the DMV for my state first. And second, why would I do that when I can easily search for "$statename dmv" and have that search universally do the right thing regardless of location? I don't want hidden inputs to my search based on my location; I want everything that determines the results encapsulated in the query.

I think this debate hits at an important point; different people want different things. Some people would find it easier to type "dmv" and have the engine know they want "dmv open right now and closest to my location". Some people, like you, want the search engine to handle your input without external influences. In the end, it might be optimal for the world to have multiple, specialized search engines/apps to please…

Is it even possible to build a search engine without external influences..?
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