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Why I hate search

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Re: Why I hate search

#41

Post by Lewisham »

danso wrote: post #38
radarsat1 wrote: post #34

This guy seems to forget that the reason Google won was because they actually presented search in a usable, non-intrusive way. They were the first company to do search _well_, providing good, reliable results, and also the first company not to surround their search box with a border full of ads. To me this makes his assertion, > There's no more reason to expect search breakthroughs from Google than there is to expect…

My thoughts exactly. Here's an excerpt from "In the Plex" http://goo.gl/5YPtb "Bell was visibly upset. The Stanford product was too good. If Excite were to host a search engine that instantly gave people information they sought, he explained, the users would leave the site instantly. Since his ad revenue came from people staying on the site—“stickiness” was the most desired metric in websites at the time—using BackRu…

When he was last talked about on HN, I think he was with Google for about 3 or 4 years before he left to return to Microsoft earlier this year.

He seems to have an axe to grind on Google, he seems to write negative stuff about them.

Re: Why I hate search

#42

Post by lambda »

danso wrote: post #38
radarsat1 wrote: post #34

This guy seems to forget that the reason Google won was because they actually presented search in a usable, non-intrusive way. They were the first company to do search _well_, providing good, reliable results, and also the first company not to surround their search box with a border full of ads. To me this makes his assertion, > There's no more reason to expect search breakthroughs from Google than there is to expect…

My thoughts exactly. Here's an excerpt from "In the Plex" http://goo.gl/5YPtb "Bell was visibly upset. The Stanford product was too good. If Excite were to host a search engine that instantly gave people information they sought, he explained, the users would leave the site instantly. Since his ad revenue came from people staying on the site—“stickiness” was the most desired metric in websites at the time—using BackRu…

I'm not so sure you should be giving him the benefit of the doubt. He worked for Microsoft for a few years http://www.linkedin.com/pub/james-whittaker/13/878/229, then moved to Google, and then moved back to Microsoft, writing a scathing article http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jw_on_tech/archive/2012/03/13/why-i-... about Google in the process. It feels to me like he was using his time at Google to get a promotion at Microsoft.

Re: Why I hate search

#43

Post by jacabado »

Wow I feel trolled by the author. Come on Google shaped the web as we know today with PageRank and AdWords, isn't it totally unfair to put things in that way? Also the author confuses search with discovery just to prove his point.

I agree it feels dumb to surf the web they we do know. But this is a case of less is more. We can think of more complex solutions but those won't solve what our current solution solves for most of the people.

Surely there is a next big thing waiting to happen regarding content discovery, the last one I saw that attempts that is Prismatic, but there is a long road to even become a plausible alternative to what we do in our current search engines.

Re: Why I hate search

#44

Post by danso »

lambda wrote: post #42
danso wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts exactly. Here's an excerpt from "In the Plex" http://goo.gl/5YPtb "Bell was visibly upset. The Stanford product was too good. If Excite were to host a search engine that instantly gave people information they sought, he explained, the users would leave the site instantly. Since his ad revenue came from people staying on the site—“stickiness” was the most desired metric in websites at the time—using BackRu…

I'm not so sure you should be giving him the benefit of the doubt. He worked for Microsoft for a few years http://www.linkedin.com/pub/james-whittaker/13/878/229 , then moved to Google, and then moved back to Microsoft, writing a scathing article http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jw_on_tech/archive/2012/03/13/why-i-... about Google in the process. It feels to me like he was using his time at Google to get a promotion at Micros…

Well, I just didn't want to go too far into making the debate about the OP personally rather than just evaluating the merits of his claim. It's possible that Google killed his dog and that his anti-Google argument has merit.

Re: Why I hate search

#45

Post by mgkimsal »

nitid_name wrote: post #37
mgkimsal wrote: post #9

He'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 trac…

>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). Doesn't google do this "in the cloud" (ugh) already? They use your past history to tailor results to you (…

They're not recording any of your activity on those pages (typing, mouse movements, copying, etc) and storing that as well. Mixing in all that usage meta-data is what I'm talking about.

Re: Why I hate search

#46

Post by cromwellian »

You know, if I ever quit Google and joined Microsoft, I still wouldn't write crap like this, even if my boss tried to force me.

Although, maybe if I quit Microsoft, and then joined Google, and then quit Google, and re-joined Microsoft I would. :)

Is it a job requirement for Microsoft that you have to write cheesy bash posts against Google?

So, what, Siri doesn't do search, even though you have to ask it to find stuff for you in Apple's commercials?

And somehow, by magically watching my search history, it will eliminate the need for me to search for a plumber?

And please, the idea that Google is trying to maximize the number of failed searches to display ads (no way, no how) or that Google is not researching ideas for guessing what you want before you search (something they've been saying for years in public about the ideal search engine) would be something Whittaker knows having worked at Google.

Did his boss at Google kick his cat or something?

Re: Why I hate search

#47

Post by iamgopal »

mgkimsal wrote: post #9

He'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 trac…

Apart from privacy policy bullshit, if google can save my searches and behavior securely and show me when I need it, it will definitely save me couple of hours a week.

Re: Why I hate search

#48

Post by j_baker »

This seems incredibly out of touch with reality. I can buy that there's a better model out there than search, but what is that model? Until the author can give me something better, search is still the best model for this, even if we accept the author's problems with search.

Re: Why I hate search

#49

Post by cromwellian »

As a friend reminded me, if Google is lying about trying to minimize searches, then 1) Why Google Instant and 2) Why "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.

If Microsoft wants to convince people they have better tools than Google, there's more classy and informative ways of going about it.

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