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Google’s top search result is Google

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Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#101

Post by diffeomorphism »

ZinniaZirconium wrote: post #15
martinskou wrote: post #6

Search is essential infrastructure for the internet and should not be monopolized. It should be free, uncluttered, distributed and transparent. The problem is not Google, its the lack of good alternatives, only DDG really.

Duck is a front-end for Bing. Why not use Bing?

For the same reason you would use startpage instead of google. Or because you like the !bangs. Or because you prefer the layout. Or because you like the instant answers. Or because you think it might be worthwhile to support a small, not (particularly) evil search engine.

Suppose for just a moment that you were right and it were identical to Bing, just with slightly better privacy. Why not use Duck instead of Bing?

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#102

Post by bobsoap »

Slartie wrote: post #64
chimen wrote: post #23

Many of them save me extra clicks which is convenient. Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. I will get mad when those products have better alternatives but it's not the case. Build better alternatives and I'm on board. In the end, Google is a business - I would promote my own shit on the first vertical as well. One thing that pisses me off is the AMP ordeal bu…

Actually, on text translations, DeepL nowadays outclasses Google Translate IMHO. The only downside is that they don't appear to offer some kind of transparent website translate feature ("put a URL in and it translates the entire site, with layout kept intact"), at least not for free. But if I happen to have a paragraph or so in some foreign language and want that translated to some language I can understand, DeepL ha…

Same here, I've been consistently surprised at how much better (and more natural/accurate) deepl is than google at translating, especially for sentences and paragraphs.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#103

Post by andrepd »

pgrote wrote: post #70
chimen wrote: post #23

Many of them save me extra clicks which is convenient. Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. I will get mad when those products have better alternatives but it's not the case. Build better alternatives and I'm on board. In the end, Google is a business - I would promote my own shit on the first vertical as well. One thing that pisses me off is the AMP ordeal bu…

I am the product. I understand this with google and accept it. They can extract whatever information they want in exchange for decent results when I search whether it comes from them or not. I get gmail, a phone os, a browser, an os, remote desktop and more for free from them. I pay for youtube premium. The value I get from google is worth it. Everything they provide is good enough and when I want a third party site…

The bitch is when you're forced to use their products whether you like it or not. Case in point recaptcha. Also many users are not in the least aware of the trade going on, and the magnitude and invasiveness of the surveillance.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#104

Post by boogies »

chimen wrote: post #23

Many of them save me extra clicks which is convenient. Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. I will get mad when those products have better alternatives but it's not the case. Build better alternatives and I'm on board. In the end, Google is a business - I would promote my own shit on the first vertical as well. One thing that pisses me off is the AMP ordeal bu…

> Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality.

This is patently false, and probably a reflection of the Google bubble you live in.

DeepL is pretty objectively superior to Google, as evaluated by journalists who natively speak the languages it translates in the articles linked on their website. You can find plenty of in depth reviews online, and every one I've read has admitted that it's at absolute worst as bad as Google Translate. Edit: https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/29/deepl-schools-other-online...

Maps is a different story, but there are certainly better options for certain specific needs. I'd like to see the noise-pollution based routing service on HN's frontpage yesterday remade with Google Maps.

Search is somewhat subjective, but I haven't used Google Search in several years and I don't consider an engine that requires me to scroll past page after page of ads — including what amount to ads for services like Google's inferior flight service, that won't necessarily be easily removed by an "out of the box" ad blocker — high quality.

And those are the services you picked. The article has a great little analysis of Google Flights and why "It did not crack the top 10 of Frommer’s 2020 ranking of airfare search engines, for instance" and why the FTC's leaked documents called it out for providing less options. (Spoiler: Up to 80% more expensive flights, when it found flights at all).

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#105

Post by paul7986 »

chimen wrote: post #40
kevingadd wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I will get mad when those products have better alternatives but it's not the case. Build better alternatives and I'm on board." How will you find out about the better alternatives? Are you certain there aren't good alternatives to translate, maps, flights, shopping etc? For any language? I know for a fact that google translate is bad for some ideographic languages and as a result there are competing services that co…

I am constantly trying new things. I just ditched duckduck go for the third time. I'm using firefox since 2 months. I am aware of alternatives. I WANT to ditch Google too but I get value from it atm that I cannot find elsewhere.

I just use both DDG and Google if needed via !G. That way i get more results from different sources.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#106

Post by rydre »

mrkramer wrote: post #91
rydre wrote: post #21

The problem is that website are commodities. The future for original high quality websites is that they should not allow search engines to crawl their content and slowly become a brand which people trust. Stop relying on search for traffic. Be an app, websites for marketing only. Alternative new search engines are needed that allow for embedding/iframe/integration of global web search results in any 3rd party website…

I never understood why websites are not personal property and why US gov. decided that anybody can crawl and scrape them at will and free of charge. That would be similar to someone crawling your house and making it fully visible and searchable to the global public . I guess Google Maps already did that. My understanding is that .com (commerce) prevailed and people who have websites want to be fully public, visible a…

> *I don't entirely understand your search engine idea

Does google allow for iframeing or customizing it's search results? No. A new search engine that has a API/plugin for 3rd party websites so that websites can integrate a global search engine into the website like google integrates websites' content into its instant answers. There is room for innovation here when 3rd party websites get creative in displaying global search results in different ways simple or complicated ways. If there are Ads in results, the website gets paid a % of the ad revenue that the search engine made due to the website embedding it's results.

Search engine's are high margin business, so they should be able to share 50% revenue with websites.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#107

Post by andrepd »

hrktb wrote: post #90
chimen wrote: post #23

Many of them save me extra clicks which is convenient. Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. I will get mad when those products have better alternatives but it's not the case. Build better alternatives and I'm on board. In the end, Google is a business - I would promote my own shit on the first vertical as well. One thing that pisses me off is the AMP ordeal bu…

> Many of them save me extra clicks which is convenient. I think the point is that some are convenient, others aren’t, but they all have prominent positioning. Google is not the best flight search service, yet it’s on top. As you say, it wouldn’t matter if Google was the best at everything all the time. The issue is that of course it isn’t, and will never be.

Out of curiosity which flight search is better than flights.google?

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#108

Post by umaar »

umaar wrote: post #92

Generally, I like the 'rich snippets' feature, but I think they've gotten worse. For example here's a reddit post I made from 6 years ago showcasing a search for 'mac shortcut screenshot' https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/1ou4i0/a_search_for... It's extremely clear, and results in minimal cognitive effort in parsing the result. Here's the result now: https://i.imgur.com/A726Dhw.png There's so much more cruft:…

Turns out Google has been doing this for my own site on certain pages. If I search for:

devtools capture element screenshot

It has listed the exact instructions on the search results page: https://i.imgur.com/NTdDjZY.png

Can I get an outsider perspective, are those 4 list items shown in the rich snippet too many? Is it too wordy? I'm wondering if a single item which said:

Search for screenshot in the Command Menu (Cmd + Shift + P)

Would be better?

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#109

Post by pydry »

boogies wrote: post #104
chimen wrote: post #23

Many of them save me extra clicks which is convenient. Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. I will get mad when those products have better alternatives but it's not the case. Build better alternatives and I'm on board. In the end, Google is a business - I would promote my own shit on the first vertical as well. One thing that pisses me off is the AMP ordeal bu…

> Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. This is patently false, and probably a reflection of the Google bubble you live in. DeepL is pretty objectively superior to Google, as evaluated by journalists who natively speak the languages it translates in the articles linked on their website. You can find plenty of in depth reviews online, and every one I've read has…

I've found plenty of situations where OSM has better data than Google Maps.
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