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Google’s top search result is Google

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Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#121

Post by chris_f »

sidibe wrote: post #39
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…

Someone will mention better alternatives here, after all I've been hearing about how ddg blows Google out of the water a couple times every week here for years.

As DDG was mentioned, feel free to come check out Runnaroo.

Similar to Startpage, the base for organic web results is Google, but it also includes additional vertical sources layered in to provide greater relevance.

It also respects literal searches with quotation marks, which is a common gripe on HN.

Still very new, but improving and growing rapidly.

Example search for React.js - https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=react.js

Existing monetization comes from the new Web Monetization API [0] standard (through Coil members) and as part of the Brave publisher program.

[0] https://webmonetization.org/

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#122

Post by ViViDboarder »

hnlmorg wrote: post #111
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. There certainly did used to be competition to Google Translate but Google crushed them by promoting their own services (which came later)[1]. I often see the argument made that these monopolies just happen to have the best software but often those arguments miss how those monopolies had already killed the competition and…

Exactly. We can see that in the future for the examples from the article too.

When Google started promoting Google Flights and Hotels over other sites, they did not offer close to the best information. In fact, as the article claims, they still don’t. Yet despite that competitors are losing traffic and going out of business (eg. Hipmunk).

It’s not hard to see where this leads over time. The competitors struggle to stay in business or even get the traffic needed to improve their products while Google gets to keep investing and iterating. Maybe in 5-10 years they’ll have a product better than the existing ones, but they’ll also have driven most competitors to obscurity.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#123

Post by abdusco »

vinay427 wrote: post #100
Slartie wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I would be prepared to switch over completely for the languages they support if DeepL didn't insert their advertisement at the bottom of some results (I've had this accidentally included in an email before), and if they had a mobile app with a text selection action on Android to highlight text and see a popup with the translation. As it is, I use it most of the time but still rely on Google Translate being more acces…

> if they had a mobile app with a text selection action on Android to highlight text and see a popup with the translation

I've had the same frustration, so I've written a simple script/app with Tasker (and AutoShare plugin) to select text and translate from DE -> EN. I use it quite frequently to learn German.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#124

Post by vntok »

andrepd wrote: post #103
pgrote wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google does not force companies to implement ReCaptcha on their own Web properties.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#125

Post by JadeNB »

xwdv wrote: post #84
jagged-chisel wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they have to start by building a better product. Any suggestions for alternative services that outperform Google’s?

Alternatives? No. Fuck little startups, most of them hawk bullshit and don't get interesting until they grow into big companies. A startup won't compete well with Google for very long and using one instead of Google feels too much like pandering to a novelty.

> Fuck little startups, most of them hawk bullshit and don't get interesting until they grow into big companies.

Surely you don't mean that it's the act of growing into a big company that makes them interesting, but rather that only the interesting ones make it to big companies. (I don't think I necessarily agree with that—I'd think amount of capital is a far bigger determinant—and I would notice that the converse is far from true.) Well, there's nothing wrong with sitting back and letting the market make the decision—but if someone's not there trying the little companies before they get big, then that's a market decision in its own right.

> A startup won't compete well with Google for very long and using one instead of Google feels too much like pandering to a novelty.

Or, perhaps, taking a stance on a matter of principle, about privacy, or about Google's monopoly powers, or, well, pick your poison.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#126

Post by MaxBarraclough »

pb7 wrote: post #87
dredmorbius wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's both tired and inaccurate. DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from multiple partners, though most commonly from Bing (and n…

No, this answer is tired and inaccurate. They successfully fool you into thinking they are much more complex than they really are. They use Bing and Bing alone for the SERP links (without this, you don’t have a search engine) and their crawlers fill in the handful of “onebox” results for certain queries. They keep changing this statement but it used to say “multiple sources like Bing, Yahoo, Oath”... all of which are…

Do you have a source for this?

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#127

Post by chris_f »

fractionalhare wrote: post #27

> A trending search in our data for “myocardial infarction” shows how Google has piled up its products at the top. It returned: - Google’s dictionary definition. - A “people also ask” box that expanded to answer related questions without leaving the search results page. - A “knowledge panel,” which is an abridged encyclopedia entry with various links. - And a “related conditions” carousel leading to various new Googl…

"Is there a way we could get quick curated answers like this without deemphasizing search results?"

Yes, here is an example of how it could work: https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=myocardial+infarction

Disclaimer, I made this website.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#128

Post by abdusco »

bobsoap wrote: post #102
Slartie wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I love the feature that allows changing words with an alternative, which triggers a new translation with the new context.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#129

Post by auganov »

I would gladly pay for a search engine that actually did some things better than Google. Like say being better at finding [semi]exact phrases, especially longer ones. Something that focused on the long tail of search queries. Also, yes, I do feel like Google has gotten pretty bad for some normal queries. But this might as well be a function of the Internet/Web changing overall.

But I find this focus on Google's supposed moral infractions ridiculous. And then competitors popup that have a strictly worse products user-wise, but want to win by claiming higher moral ground. They don't fix any of the issues. I just don't see any of that taking off.

To date, I have not seen a single search engine that actually does something significant better. Not only that, pretty much all of them fail miserably for anything more specific. This tells me Google is still absolutely on top of their game.

I like these widgets. Sometimes I even get annoyed when I WAS expecting it to popup but it wouldn't.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#130

Post by JadeNB »

cowpig wrote: post #63
fractionalhare wrote: post #27

> A trending search in our data for “myocardial infarction” shows how Google has piled up its products at the top. It returned: - Google’s dictionary definition. - A “people also ask” box that expanded to answer related questions without leaving the search results page. - A “knowledge panel,” which is an abridged encyclopedia entry with various links. - And a “related conditions” carousel leading to various new Googl…

You like it in the myopic sense of the word. In the way you like a big cake that sits in front of you, even if eating that cake is going to be bad for your health. Google's monopolistic business practices are the same: they are convenient in the short-term for you, but they are destroying healthy industries. Over time the result won't be something you like.

> Google's monopolistic business practices are the same: they are convenient in the short-term for you, but they are destroying healthy industries. Over time the result won't be something you like.

Amazon—which genuinely used to be a great and reliable shopping experience, and made a bunch of changes that looked user focussed—is a great example of this.

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