Why I hate search
blogs.msdn.com
Why I hate search
1–10 of 78 posts
Re: Why I hate search
#2>"Search is dead. The web doesn't need it and neither do we"
Okay, but I'd love to know what the alternative is. I can't picture any more efficient method to organize the web, not that that means it isn't out there.
Search implies loss, as the author says. But it also implies that you can be anyone or anything and be found, in the vast swamp of the internet.
Re: Why I hate search
#3Its pretty obvious by this point that Google's aim is not annoying the maximum number of people to maximize ad revenue.
Even if it was - why would you join Microsoft?
Re: Why I hate search
#4The problem is that if you try to delegate responsibility for avoiding the scenario where the information is "lost" to begin with, you have to make sure that the process performing the searching and organizing knows what to look for at least as well as, or better than, the person for who the finding is being performed. I'll be very impressed if you can create an algorithm that knows what I want, up to the second, better than I do.
Re: Why I hate search
#5>"Search is dead. The web doesn't need it and neither do we" Okay, but I'd love to know what the alternative is. I can't picture any more efficient method to organize the web, not that that means it isn't out there. Search implies loss, as the author says. But it also implies that you can be anyone or anything and be found , in the vast swamp of the internet.
Agreed. I think the author is focussing too much on semantics as opposed to intent, which is to filter. His over-emphasis of the word "lost" misleads us into thinking that the fact that we're searching suggests that we lost something to begin with. Perhaps an alternate view is that we didn't lose anything, but we had too much to begin with. Eliminating noise is the real problem. Doing so exposes that which we wanted, which was in fact always in front of us to begin with.
Re: Why I hate search
#6I take issue with the premise that search implies loss. When you solve a maths problem you could be "searching for an answer" -- it doesn't mean you've lost it before now. For me, Google isn't really about searching for something you're missing, it's about solving a problem. So it's not really serving results, it's serving "answers". Some of them are more correct than others.
I don't see that search is broken at all. I think search is one tool in a great arsenal of other tools, like social media, blogs, sites like HN, that we have available for discovery of new content and new sites.
Re: Why I hate search
#7>"Search is dead. The web doesn't need it and neither do we" Okay, but I'd love to know what the alternative is. I can't picture any more efficient method to organize the web, not that that means it isn't out there. Search implies loss, as the author says. But it also implies that you can be anyone or anything and be found , in the vast swamp of the internet.
I don't understand his jump from "search is unpleasant and implies loss" to "search is dead". Cleaning bathrooms is also unpleasant, but to say companies specializing in it are dead? I don't think we ever globally solved the lost car keys and lost pets issues, either. It's a fact of life. The world is a complex mess. Thinking you can "just organize it" is hopelessly idealistic.
Edit: And he also implies that all searching is for things that we had in the first place. He completely forgets about searching for new information or things. Searching a library doesn't have to be unpleasant.
Re: Why I hate search
#8Microsoft loses a half billion dollars every quarter on Bing. Google makes billions. I think he's just depressed he left Google for Bing.
Re: Why I hate search
#9He's not quite making the leap I thought he would, so I'll make it.
Our browsers are dumb, and encourage 'search'. Google's made inroads by making a faster browser that makes it easier to 'search' (through them, of course), but keeping track of that information in the browser sucks. Browser bookmark tools are a joke, and web-based ones, while better, generally aren't much better.
I envision a 'browser' that can track my behaviour, watch what I do, show me more detailed history info, make 'history' part of my 'search' results, adapt my search to my behaviour and more. Perhaps Google will be the ones to do this, but they'll only do it if they can show us more ads (or "more relevant" ads).
Ideas: "history" on chrome, for example, shows me a little information on pages in my history, but not too much. Did I copy/paste information from that page? How long was I on it? Show me thumbnails from that page. Show me other meta data from that page (author, friends that shared it on facebook/g+, etc). Information on what I did with info on that page is often what I'm looking for, not just every page in my history with a particular word on it. Screenshots would help jog my memory, but so would something that said "you copied 'foobarbaz' from this page and emailed it to sam" next to a history result.
Merging in local bookmarked and historical pages in with regular search results. Or, more to the point, merging in external search engine results when I'm searching through browser history. Have an option to make searching my local history the default, with extras merged in from google/bing/yahoo/etc.
None of this will happen overnight, but... there's a huge amount of metadata associated with the activity with page data that isn't being used, because having us go to a browser bar and search (again!) for the same data we found 2 hours ago is more profitable. Our browsers are dumb right now, and there's quite a lot more that could be being done to take advantage of the local intelligence that lives on our desktops or in our devices.
Re: Why I hate search
#10>"Search is dead. The web doesn't need it and neither do we" Okay, but I'd love to know what the alternative is. I can't picture any more efficient method to organize the web, not that that means it isn't out there. Search implies loss, as the author says. But it also implies that you can be anyone or anything and be found , in the vast swamp of the internet.
I don't understand his jump from "search is unpleasant and implies loss" to "search is dead". Cleaning bathrooms is also unpleasant, but to say companies specializing in it are dead? I don't think we ever globally solved the lost car keys and lost pets issues, either. It's a fact of life. The world is a complex mess. Thinking you can "just organize it" is hopelessly idealistic. Edit: And he also implies that all sear…
Yes, I only really "search" google etc when I am looking for new information (which is quite often). For frequently visited sites there are bookmarks etc.
I guess there are people (sometimes me) who use google as their navigation bar, but in such a case they are not really using google as "search" anyway,