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Why I hate search

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Re: Why I hate search

#51

Post by roc »

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…

All the author really did was restate the innovator's dilemma for this specific case.

Yahoo's directories were more profitable to it than search and thus search innovations were a threat to existing revenue. (See also: pg's Yahoo article about Yahoo's ad sales)

So innovation in search (and ads) came from outside Yahoo.

Similarly, any innovation that fundamentally threatens Google's ad revenue is unlikely to be pursued by Google itself. So there's no good reason to expect that sort of innovation to come from them.

Hence the example of Siri turning a spoken query into a vocalized answer (whenever it can), rather than a list of links with ads around them.

Though the author is off a bit when they imply there's no room for ads in the process. As most use of Siri still involves looking at the screen, on which it would be trivial to drop a narrow banner ad or promoted link.

Re: Why I hate search

#52

Post by willy1234x1 »

lubutu wrote: post #36
gcp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found the cases you describe to be one of these areas where Firefox seems to behave way superior than Chrome. It's not entirely as advanced as you describe of course, but usually just typing parts of a few key words returns a list of relevant sites you've ever been to, and the ranking is very good. The algorithm seems to even take into account whether you originally typed in the link etc. In general, if you've v…

This is the one reason I stick with Firefox. In Chrome if you search for the name of a YouTube video, with a string you know was in the title of the page, you're very unlikely to get that page as a result. If you're lucky you'll get another page with a link to the page you want in the suggestions list. In Firefox it'll almost always be an instant result, right at the top of the list. It seems strange, but Firefox's s…

The Awesomebar is one of my main reasons why I never left Firefox. It really is just too great. The ability to use wildcards to narrow my searches is too great. Plus adding keywords for searches is too great, if I want to search Youtube, I type yt , Wikipedia? wk , these small features are such great boosts to my browsing experience.

Re: Why I hate search

#53

Post by cromwellian »

lubutu wrote: post #36
gcp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found the cases you describe to be one of these areas where Firefox seems to behave way superior than Chrome. It's not entirely as advanced as you describe of course, but usually just typing parts of a few key words returns a list of relevant sites you've ever been to, and the ranking is very good. The algorithm seems to even take into account whether you originally typed in the link etc. In general, if you've v…

This is the one reason I stick with Firefox. In Chrome if you search for the name of a YouTube video, with a string you know was in the title of the page, you're very unlikely to get that page as a result. If you're lucky you'll get another page with a link to the page you want in the suggestions list. In Firefox it'll almost always be an instant result, right at the top of the list. It seems strange, but Firefox's s…

I just tried this experiment and I get the same results. Firefox uses Google search on the backend, so I don't see how it could be otherwise.

Re: Why I hate search

#54

Post by ErikD »

cromwellian wrote: post #53
lubutu wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the one reason I stick with Firefox. In Chrome if you search for the name of a YouTube video, with a string you know was in the title of the page, you're very unlikely to get that page as a result. If you're lucky you'll get another page with a link to the page you want in the suggestions list. In Firefox it'll almost always be an instant result, right at the top of the list. It seems strange, but Firefox's s…

I just tried this experiment and I get the same results. Firefox uses Google search on the backend, so I don't see how it could be otherwise.

He means using the auto-complete in your address bar, not actually searching with it.

Re: Why I hate search

#55

Post by badgergravling »

Really bizarre. I totally get that searching needs improvement in various areas, but Siri etc are just search via audio. The other option is to give up all your privacy to allow tracking, but as you see on a daily basis, we're a long way from contextual understanding that really works.

SO without search you'd be relying on asking Hackernews/Twitter etc for every single enquiry you have...

Including the embarrassing ones...

Re: Why I hate search

#56

Post by mistermann »

danso wrote: post #30
mistermann wrote: post #23

I don't agree entirely with OP, but there is truth in what he says. > The more ugly blue links you serve up, the more time users have to click on ads. Serve up bad results and the user must search again and this doubles the number of sponsored links you get paid for. Why be part of the solution when being part of the problem pays so damn well? One thing that to me seems like a no brainer is for google to have user-co…

Um...isn't this what Google+ is supposed to do, in effect? By registering your +1's for sites and users, Google gets a good fix of where you like your information from. However, the solution you propose would fail if similar precedents are to be considered. Users do not like manually curating lists (remember Facebook friend lists?). On a philosophical point, your solution requires that users know what they don't know…

> Um...isn't this what Google+ is supposed to do, in effect? Maybe, I have no idea. It lacks the manual grouping though.

>Users do not like manually curating lists No one is forcing them, I'm not proposing this is the default behaviour, this would be a part of advanced search.

>your solution requires that users know what they don't know No, it enables users who do know something to leverage that knowledge (as the existing "site:" qualifier allows with a single site)

A very small number of google users even know about any kind of advanced functionality so there'd be no risk of an "echo chamber phenomenon".

Re: Why I hate search

#57

Post by Seth_Kriticos »

wladimir wrote: post #7
tatsuke95 wrote: post #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.

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…

Adding to that, "just organizing it" has one substantial problem: people generally disagree in how to organize the world and what they see as priorities (stuff they want to find), so any one way to do this would be the wrong one for the big majority.

Re: Why I hate search

#58

Post by Lagged2Death »

We know every place possible where the online equivalent of car keys are found.

Well, I don't, but there's this company called Google that seems to.

Speaking broadly, "search" has been, as he points out, a major paradigm in human intellectual activity long before and far outside the web. Library card catalogs existed for searching. Door-to-door salesmen are effectively searching for customers. Inventories, indexes, tables-of-contents, filing systems, maps, and written records of many forms exist to facilitate searches or to distill the results of searches.

The word 'search' is a negative word. It fairly reeks of loss...

I think this opening statement embodies the mistake in his whole attitude very succinctly. A system for searching - particularly a nearly effortless and instantaneous one like Google offers - gives users the freedom to lose things, to forget things, secure in the knowledge that we'll be able to find them again when we decide we need them.

Your to-do list has 11 things on it; would you try to memorize it or would you write it down? Most people would rather write it down because it frees their minds to think about other things in the interim.

But of course, looking at the list is fundamentally a search.

Re: Why I hate search

#59

Post by DominikR »

What started as a nice thought that could have been transformed or applied by the author into something useful (In the sense that it could have helped someone to create something great) launched into another "I hate Google and you should too" ad by some Microsoft employee.

I wonder what kind of developers are they targeting? (as this blog is obviously targeting developers)

Do you have to properly hate something to be a good fit for Microsoft? Seems so, especially when you look at other campaigns (Gmail man reading your email etc.)

And then theres the grave accusation of Google distorting the search results, again with no evidence whatsoever.

This "former professor and startup founder" couldn't even come up with 5 or 10 test queries to prove his point.

But still this ad was well written, it tricked my built in spam filter and so i read it from start to end. Well done.

Re: Why I hate search

#60

Post by lopatin »

What does he suggest, though? If having a "decision" engine is what he thinks is best, I'd say that usually the top 3 organic results in Google for just about any search are much more relevant that the technology Microsoft has to provide a decision.

Small example off the top of my head. The query is "Who uses LLVM?". 3rd result on Google is the "LLVM - Users" page that lists all the companies using it. Definitely the page that I need. This page is no where to be seen in the Bing first page results for the same query.

Saying that search is dead isn't right because for many queries, you need tons of results. Like someone mentioned here, if you're searching for a plumber, you want a selection. And implying that Google is broken isn't right when they do the best of both worlds: unobtrusive search with a ton of relevant results, and top 3 results that are about as good of a decision tool than what Bing currently has.

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