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The man who killed Google Search?

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Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#291

Post by iamthirsty »

narag wrote: post #286
iamthirsty wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You know how a chess player will say something like "mate in 6" because their experience of all the options left to their opponent are both easily countered and will not prevent them from losing? As a chess person, saying "Mate in _" means it's a calculated inevitability. There is no mathematical way out of it. It is not nearly equivalent to the outside judgement of a company with so many factors — it's just incomp…

Yes, but there are other positions that do fit the comparison, like a couple of advanced passed pawns that can still be defended against with surgical precision, but most times are lethal.

Again, I think there is a misunderstanding of what the saying is used for.

In chess, it's specifically used for saying "even with the best defense possible, you will be mated no mater what in a maximum of X moves." Computers use this definition as well. If Stockfish says # in 6, that means there is an indefensible path to mate available, and with the best play of the opponent will take 6 moves.

It's not a "Mate in X, probably."

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#292

Post by imp0cat »

autokad wrote: post #233
autokad wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

honestly, 99% of the time I don't need search. I want AI. I don't want to have to use a weird syntax to 'talk to a search engine'. sometimes I don't even know what the word is that I am searching for. I want something I can just ... talk to. I use to use search every day, now I use it about once a month.

@drowsspa I don't use bing search, I use chatgpt and claude. Here are some examples: after pasting hundreds of log lines of output from a failed build request, "why did this build fail?" After pasting my last 3 workouts, "I am wondering if I am not putting enough muscle on my body / torso. Is this the case? if so, suggest me an exercise that utilizes body weight, dumbbells, or weighted exercise ball" It suggested dum…

Have you tried Phind? I find that it takes most of the "clunkiness" out of the process of searching by interrogating AI + searching the web at the same time.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#293

Post by deskr »

wayne-li2 wrote: post #222

Even though I agree with what the author is saying, the tone of this article is off putting to me. There are ways to call out people for being bad at their job without resorting to “class traitor” and “ratfucker”. That being said, Google search is 100% dead. I append “reddit” to every Google query to get actual results from people, and I don’t see it on Reddit, I give up on my query.

Considering what these guys have done to google search, I think this is the absolute minimum set of words they deserve.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#294

Post by joenot443 »

romanhn wrote: post #39
neilv wrote: post #35

I think this article would work better if it were written entirely like textbook traditional investigative journalism. And less like the modern TV opinion personality, or the random strong-opinion Web comments in which many of the rest of us (including myself) indulge.

Agreed. I struggled to keep going after "computer scientist class traitor". A very juvenile take that reflects poorly on the author, IMO.

You don’t find it to be succinct? It’s certainly pejorative, but in four words it explains quite nicely how the author feels about Raghaven in a way most engineers can probably relate to. If he’d said “engineer who no longer builds but leverages their past technical background to instead succeed in a management role, often to the detriment of their past engineering peers” it would roughly get the same idea across, it’s just a chore to read.

Personally I don’t mind that sort of colloquial flare, it reads like I’m talking with a real person rather than a design document.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#297

Post by romanhn »

dekhn wrote: post #273
kelnos wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure it does prevent some harm that would otherwise happen. There are certainly people in the world who would think twice about breaking an oath they've made, regardless of whether or not you think it's goofy. And I think that is really part of the problem. The idea that something like this is "goofy" just makes me feel profoundly sad. Do people just not care about integrity anymore, to the point that asking some…

Perhaps the people who think it's goofy may have actually put some thought behind their statements and have good reasons? For example, I find the oath as written to be effectively impossible to implement- it's very lofty sounding, but depends greatly on the nature of "honesty": "I shall participate in none but honest enterprises" Who defines honesty in this context? What if two engineers disagree in their interpretat…

"Honest enterprises" also falls into the trap of anthropomorphizing organizations. Companies are not people and cannot be honest/dishonest, moral/immoral, etc. Companies are made up of people who choose to take certain positions and actions. The oath sounds nice, but ultimately is empty.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#298

Post by deskr »

I think what Google doesn't realise is that they're driving around with an open container of petrol slushing around on the floor. It just needs a spark (from a new competitor) and fire is real.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#300

Post by Certhas »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #216
maxerickson wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is definition of dead? 15 years later they have huge majority of traffic share and lots of revenue.

Companies this size die several years before the body hits the floor. They're dead when everyone starts to hate them and someone says "no, look how much money they're making, they're fine." That's the fatal blow, because they think they're fine, and keep doing the things that make everyone hate them. At that point you're just waiting for someone else to offer an alternative. Then people prefer the alternative because…

Any examples of this actually playing out with a company as established as Google? You can read comments like this on many companies... Microsoft (70B$ income), Meta (40B$), Oracle (8.5B$), IBM(7.5B$), SAP (6B$), yet none of them seem to ever actually enter the predicted death spiral.

And the internet isn't new anymore. There is no vast landscape of unexplored new technological possibilities, and no garage start up with an engineering mindset that will just offer a better solution.

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