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The man who killed Google Search?

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Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#411

Post by gverrilla »

fuzztester wrote: post #346
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.

Same here with YouTube, assuming they use ML, which is likely. They routinely give me brain-dead suggestions such as to watch a video I just watched today or yesterday, among other absurdities.

YT Shorts recommendations are a joke. I'm an atheist and very rarely watch anything related to religion, and even so Shorts put me in 3 or 4 live prayers/scams (not sure) the last few months.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#412

Post by imzadi »

ianbutler wrote: post #185
imzadi wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I find myself seeing nothing useful on Kagi, going to Google, seeing nothing useful, then asking ChatGPT and sometimes seeing something useful and othertimes being led on a wild goose chase. The general state of information retrieval seems bleak. Reddit is usually the solution for me, even on technical matters now.

Kagi lets me raise and lower sites or even block sites, so I get results more relevant to me. If I see a site that is not useful (hello Quora) I can block them. If I see something I like, I can raise it.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#413

Post by jokoon »

__loam wrote: post #372
oblio wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Don't forget about that expensive GPU infrastructure you invested in.

and the power bill

and how difficult it is to program those GPU to do ML

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#414

Post by leoc »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #219
arromatic wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did the slashtag feature worked and what did it do ? It seems like a interesting concept but sadly the site is dead . What happened to it ?

People would add sites for a particular topic (aka slashtag) to their list. That would build a virtual custom search engine within the search engine. And topic specific searches thrown at it would consistently out perform Bing and Google in terms of search quality. The meta "spam" slash tag (everyone got their own) would let you tell the engine sites you never wanted to see in your search results so if you were tired…

FWIW, I've wanted things like that for so long. I'm sad that I never even heard of Blekko.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#415

Post by aaron695 »

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.

[dead]

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#416

Post by epcoa »

gverrilla wrote: post #411
fuzztester wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here with YouTube, assuming they use ML, which is likely. They routinely give me brain-dead suggestions such as to watch a video I just watched today or yesterday, among other absurdities.

YT Shorts recommendations are a joke. I'm an atheist and very rarely watch anything related to religion, and even so Shorts put me in 3 or 4 live prayers/scams (not sure) the last few months.

Prayers for the unbelievers makes some sense.

But I associate YouTube promotions with garbage any how. The few things I might buy like Tide laundry detergent are entirely despite occasional YouTube promotion.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#417

Post by stevage »

etempleton wrote: post #308
sailfast wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed - I can appreciate the sentiment and the history, but the ad hominem is not really necessary to prove the point and undermines the credibility of the post. I still use Google, but man has it become difficult to get to what I want.

I agree, but all of the alternatives are no better. Bing and Duck Duck Go are okay sometimes, but truly terrible other times. Google is consistently worse than it once was, but still better than the competition. I know search is hard to do well, but if Google is truly floundering where is the startup that for it better and not just better for a very specific niche area, but truly better across the board?

Kagi is great. I switched my browser to it a couple of months ago and have not looked back. Used google once in that time I think.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#418

Post by barfbagginus »

bbor wrote: post #337
candiodari wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) This is short-sighted. What you're suggesting is in fact a way to optimize short-term gain over long-term viability. It's pure MBA tactics. Additionally, it's complete and total oversimplification. If you look at Google's earnings it's pretty damn clear that at least until 2020 they were not just going for maximum total spend, but for a steady, gradual raise in total spend. Not too slow, not too fast. They were NO…

Totally agree on the overall prognosis of Google - I am (also?) one of said engineers! Here’s a recent update from a tiny corner of the company: the rank and file is still incredibly smart and generally well-intentioned, but are following hollow simulacrums of the original culture - all-hands, dogfooding, internal feedback, and ground-up engineering priorities are all maintained in form, but they are now rendered com…

Drop your good intentions - towards Google, that is.

Work to sabotage and collapse the organization - do that for the good of humanity.

Thank you for your work, and good luck getting out without harm or reprisal Hit em hard.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#420

Post by overgard »

I switched to DuckDuckGo recently, partially because google results don't seem very good anymore, but also very much because of how hostile it is towards VPNs. I like having a VPN when I'm travelling or on a public wifi as a sensible precaution, but Google constantly forces me through irritating "prove you're human" puzzles.
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