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The man who killed Google Search?

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Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#361

Post by jokoon »

JohnFen wrote: post #264
gregw134 wrote: post #250

Ex-Google search engineer here (2019-2023). I know a lot of the veteran engineers were upset when Ben Gomes got shunted off. Probably the bigger change, from what I've heard, was losing Amit Singhal who led Search until 2016. Amit fought against creeping complexity. There is a semi-famous internal document he wrote where he argued against the other search leads that Google should use less machine-learning, or at leas…

> where he argued against the other search leads that Google should use less machine-learning This better echoes my personal experience with the decline of Google search than TFA: it seems to be connected to the increasing use of ML in that the more of it Google put in, the worse the results I got were.

that's not something ML people would like to hear

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#362

Post by banish-m4 »

gregw134 wrote: post #250

Ex-Google search engineer here (2019-2023). I know a lot of the veteran engineers were upset when Ben Gomes got shunted off. Probably the bigger change, from what I've heard, was losing Amit Singhal who led Search until 2016. Amit fought against creeping complexity. There is a semi-famous internal document he wrote where he argued against the other search leads that Google should use less machine-learning, or at leas…

Thanks for writing this insightful piece.

The pathologies of big companies that fail to break themselves up into smaller non-siloed entities like Virgin Group does. Maintaining the successful growing startup ways and fighting against politics, bureaucracy, fiefdoms, and burgeoning codebases is difficult but is a better way than chasing short-term profits, massive codebases, institutional inertia, dealing with corporate bullshit that gets in the way of the customer experience and pushes out solid technical ICs and leaders.

I'm surprised there aren't more people on here who decide "F-it, MAANG megacorps are too risky and backwards not representative of their roots" and form worker-owned co-ops to do what MAANGs are doing, only better, and with long-term business sustainability, long tenure, employee perks like the startup days, and positive civil culture as their central mission.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#363

Post by bigjimmyk3 »

lazyeye wrote: post #225

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/23/google-search-boss-raghavan-...

> stepped up from working 100 hours a week to working 120 hours

That's 17 hours a day, which seems unlikely (for an extended period of time) without some kind of performance enhancing substance. Also, I'm not sure I'd want to use the end product of that kind of death march for anything important.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#364

Post by oblio »

jokoon wrote: post #361
JohnFen wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where he argued against the other search leads that Google should use less machine-learning This better echoes my personal experience with the decline of Google search than TFA: it seems to be connected to the increasing use of ML in that the more of it Google put in, the worse the results I got were.

that's not something ML people would like to hear

Is ML the new SOAP? Looks like a silver bullet and 5 years later you're drowning in complexity for no discernible reason?

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#366

Post by deepakarora3 »

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.

I have been using Google search for many years now and for the past few years have been wondering if the search has really gone bad or is it just me. I remember the days when searching for something used to bring up a few sponsored links separately and I could go page after page with different results on each page allowing me to access a wealth of information and extending my reach deep into the internet. Now, it is all sponsored links and the same ones page after page. It is so sad to see and the worse part is that I am not seeing any alternative. Bing is equally bad, DDG only marginally better. I hope there comes an alternative soon but I also realize coming into this space is certainly not easy.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#367

Post by o9aswjl5wj4 »

nbittich wrote: post #102

Everytime I need to make a search on Google, I start to feel anxious, already convinced I'm not going to find anything useful about the problem I'm trying to solve. This often means I already tried everything else. It's a sad situation.a product shouldn't make you feel anxious.

Then why use it? I switched to DuckDuckGo years ago and it's fine.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#368

Post by romanhn »

davidgerard wrote: post #341
romanhn wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hyperbole is well and good in fiction and personal opinion pieces. I suppose my, and parent commenter's issue, is that we expected a certain type of writing, but got another. And that's fine. I don't have a dog in this fight, but to me it went beyond hyperbole and into personal attack territory. I called it juvenile because the descriptors lack nuance in the same way that "management bad, programmer good" arguments d…

I notice you're not supplying that alleged "full context".

Obviously I don't have it. The author doesn't either and he is the one making the big claims. Regardless, I'm not arguing the extent to which Prabhakar Raghavan contributed to Google Search quality, I haven't even heard the name before this post. I'm not a fan of the writing style, that is all.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#369

Post by __loam »

gregw134 wrote: post #250

Ex-Google search engineer here (2019-2023). I know a lot of the veteran engineers were upset when Ben Gomes got shunted off. Probably the bigger change, from what I've heard, was losing Amit Singhal who led Search until 2016. Amit fought against creeping complexity. There is a semi-famous internal document he wrote where he argued against the other search leads that Google should use less machine-learning, or at leas…

[flagged]

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#370

Post by ed_mercer »

imzadi wrote: post #179
nbittich wrote: post #102

Everytime I need to make a search on Google, I start to feel anxious, already convinced I'm not going to find anything useful about the problem I'm trying to solve. This often means I already tried everything else. It's a sad situation.a product shouldn't make you feel anxious.

I just recently switched to Kagi. It's worth paying a few bucks to get decent results.

Kagi seems to have their heads up their asses though. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40011314
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