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Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

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Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#131

Post by ares623 »

hatthew wrote: post #107
ares623 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Kagi for non-US folks? I've tried switching to DDG a while back but the experience for me, living outside the US, was not great. Sure, programming related searches were pretty good, but everything else was not. Does Kagi have a better localized experience?

Just curious, are you wondering about location-specific results ("best restaurants"), country-specific results ("how to do my taxes"), or language-specific results ("pasos de división larga")?

Yeah, location specific and country specific. Like if I'm looking for a product, I want results from local shops, not from eBay/Amazon/etc.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#132

Post by andrewmutz »

justapassenger wrote: post #59
peab wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they didn't - hence the ads

It's a very common story in industry. You start nimble, and disrupt bloated platforms. Then, as you grow, pressure grows and you also bloat. Then new company comes that brings nimble product and disrupt you. Search, TV->internet video, newspapers->internet - all of them go through those cycles.

You forgot the main source of pressure: you sell off equity in your company in exchange for cash. The buyers are buying the promise of future profits. At first, you still hold the vast majority of the voting rights, but over time you sell more and more and expectations rise and rise.

Eventually you are an organization whose purpose is to return cash to shareholders in the near term.

Hence a page full of ads, and no reason to think things will ever change.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#133

Post by stinkbeetle »

rpdillon wrote: post #90
stinkbeetle wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My memory says that wasn't such a big selling point. When Google first came out it blew all other search engines away in terms of result quality. If, back then, Yahoo and Altavista were minimalist and Google was a garish nightmare of ads and flashing gifs and nested banners and affiliate buttons, I would still have happily used it for the results. Google's search interface is still reasonably clean IMO. Nowhere near…

Speed. Altavista, Dogpile, Metacrawler and the rest were slow, and Google felt instant.

For me at least, it wasn't that either. It was the quality of the results.

I would have put up with slow bloated adware Google results of early 2000s, compared to fast minimal sleek interface with results of Yahoo/Altavista/anything else I tried.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#134

Post by onionisafruit »

miladyincontrol wrote: post #106
beckthompson wrote: post #20

Its sad but I think at this point its kind of a safety issue not to use an ad blocker. Those results are not clearly ads and I've clicked on fake links in the past when they were.

It absolutely is. I fear for the older generations and less tech minded people who google their bank, and get some random phishing site. Or similarly google what should be libre software and get some random malware on a site that looks 'close enough'. Lets call it what it is, a cancer, one that literally enables countless bad actors and purely for a search engine's own profit. In theory theres a time and place for ad…

Not just the older generation. I can’t get my adult children to care about ad blockers.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#135

Post by efitz »

justapassenger wrote: post #59
peab wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they didn't - hence the ads

It's a very common story in industry. You start nimble, and disrupt bloated platforms. Then, as you grow, pressure grows and you also bloat. Then new company comes that brings nimble product and disrupt you. Search, TV->internet video, newspapers->internet - all of them go through those cycles.

The term for this is “enshittification”

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#137

Post by MountDoom »

jameson wrote: post #115
amatecha wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had to dig up this link, 1999 review[0]: "Google (www.google.com) is a pure search engine - no weather, no news feed, no links to sponsors, no ads, no distractions, no portal litter. Nothing but a fast-loading search site. Reward them with a visit." [0] https://i.redd.it/uea6u7c4oje31.jpg

i feel sometimes it's best for the company to stay private

The founders of the company still have a controlling stake in the business. External shareholders have little leverage.

Going public gave Google a lot of nearly-free money to grow, and it's how you've gotten both Gmail and Google+. But more importantly, it allowed them to offer much higher total comp packages by issuing more stock on the go. I think they're prisoners of the stock market only insofar that if the stock stops going up, they're gonna have a harder time hiring and retaining talent.

In a way, it's the employees holding the company hostage. They're simultaneously complaining about innocence lost and stating their implicit preference for this outcome by demanding top-of-the-line comp.

If you want to be paid the same as at Microsoft or Facebook, you become Microsoft or Facebook.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#138

Post by laserlight »

bhartzer wrote: post #118
CSMastermind wrote: post #19

I'm old enough to remember when a big selling point of Google was that it didn't do this.

I also am old enough to remember when their motto was "Don't be evil."

Which has been doublespeak from day one.
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