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The man who killed Google Search?

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Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#611

Post by barbariangrunge »

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…

Machine learning or not, seo spam sort of killed search. It’s more or less impossible to find real sites by interesting humans these days. Almost all results are Reddit, YouTube, content marketing, or seo spam. And google’s failure here killed the old school blogosphere (medium and substack only slightly count), personal websites, and forums

Same is happening to YouTube as well. Feels like it’s nothing but promoters pushing content to gain followers to sell ads or other stuff because nobody else’s videos ever surface. Just a million people gaming the algorithm and the only winners are the people who devote the most time to it. And by the way, would I like to sign up for their patreon and maybe one of their online courses?

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#612

Post by mondobe »

fuzztester wrote: post #594
minetest2048 wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can scrub on the mobile player, that's what makes it so much frustrating because you can't do that on desktop

What does scrubbing mean in this context? Blocking the Shorts?

Seeking to a certain part of the video. On mobile, you can do it by dragging the progress bar at the bottom of the screen.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#613

Post by snowwrestler »

wepple wrote: post #392
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. But what do you expect when the boss comes from McKinsey? Not only does the place teach a particular skillset, it also selects for very peculiar employees. It would be downright weird if an ex-McKinsey employee were anything like a decent engineer.

Are there known examples of ex-McKinsey employees that are generally considered a force for good in general?

Tom Peters’ work on management excellence is generally well-regarded and he started it at McKinsey.

He’s also more recently spoken pretty aggressively about how he thinks McKinsey has lost their way as a business and become a negative force.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#614

Post by nevster »

fuzztester wrote: post #594
minetest2048 wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can scrub on the mobile player, that's what makes it so much frustrating because you can't do that on desktop

What does scrubbing mean in this context? Blocking the Shorts?

Scrubbing means quickly moving the current playback position back and forward

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#615

Post by Nevermark »

romanhn wrote: post #136
Nevermark wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hyperbole that is quite obviously hyperbole is a well accepted literary device. It is a form of highlight via creative exaggeration of non-critical points, that is transparent, not deceptive, in service of making serious adjacent points. [0] The point here is to highlight the actually cartoonish level of dysfunction and damage with an intentionally cartoonish flourish. The "villian" in this case can be colorfully int…

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…

> it went beyond hyperbole and into personal attack territory.

> the descriptors lack nuance

> motivations, incentives, and constraints are not black and white

Hyperbole isn't a knife. Any more than a political cartoonist's brush. It is satire. Biting humor.

The more ridiculous the caricature, the less you are supposed to take the details literally.

The "culprit" is a lightening rod. Taking the heat for what is obviously the result of a lot of people's seemingly poor or unfortunate judgements. Google search was a thing of beauty. Now it is an ugly swamp I have personally stopped trying to wade through.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#617

Post by tzury »

The man who killed Google .* is its CEO.

- Search

- Maps

- Chat/Calls/Meetings

To name a few. Letting PMs making cardinal decisions, contradict with others, then renaming and rebranding same functionality shutting down popular products on the way.

Google cloud is a sad example of how a better product failed to take over the market, despite the fact the buyers are tech savvy and appreciate great technology.

Waymo is a complete failure, it runs, indeed, but it takes roughly a million dollars per car for the equipment and assembly, so it’s easy to see its lack of sustainability.

At last, Transformers, an invention made in Google, became its biggest threat.

No unified strategy that combines and integrates all parties and plans, so it seems. And it is sad. Very very sad.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#618

Post by noirbot »

1024core wrote: post #527
distances wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kagi is that alternative I suppose, at least for those who use search enough to pay for it. HN has a lot of testimonials on how good Kagi is.

Until Kagi becomes popular. Then the same "SEO" bullshit that plagues Google will bite Kagi too. Right now Kagi is too small to make it worthwhile to spend resources "optimizing" for it.

Perhaps, but isn't the value of Kagi that it's user-tunable? If you open a page and it's distasteful to you, you can remove it from future searches, and you can uprank the sites you find useful. Related, no idea if they actually do it, but presumably, Kagi is getting signal from that about what people find useful, and integrating that into their rankings.

If I run into SEO crap on Google, I'm not sure they ever know I hated it and went elsewhere. They see that I searched and I clicked, and they got their money and don't care.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#619

Post by baryphonic »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #611
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…

Machine learning or not, seo spam sort of killed search. It’s more or less impossible to find real sites by interesting humans these days. Almost all results are Reddit, YouTube, content marketing, or seo spam. And google’s failure here killed the old school blogosphere (medium and substack only slightly count), personal websites, and forums Same is happening to YouTube as well. Feels like it’s nothing but promoters…

What I don't understand about this explanation is that Google's results are abysmal compared to e.g. DuckDuckGo or even Brave search. (I haven't tried Kagi, but people here rave about it as well.) Sure, all the SEO is targeting googlebot, but Google has by far more resources to mitigate SEO spam than just about anyone else. If this is the full explanation, couldn't Google just copy the strategies the (much) smaller rivals are using?

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#620

Post by codegladiator »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #611
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…

Machine learning or not, seo spam sort of killed search. It’s more or less impossible to find real sites by interesting humans these days. Almost all results are Reddit, YouTube, content marketing, or seo spam. And google’s failure here killed the old school blogosphere (medium and substack only slightly count), personal websites, and forums Same is happening to YouTube as well. Feels like it’s nothing but promoters…

spam didn't kill search. Google willingness to promote spam for ads killed Google. Google is not search.
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