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Google’s top search result is Google

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Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#131

Post by boogies »

chimen wrote: post #65
matsemann wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would a better alternative surface?

Here, on ProductHunt and any other way. How did Firefox re-invent itself? It attacked the very thing that Google could not provide: privacy. How is DDG on such a good trend lately? It requires a lot of effort I agree but google also put a lot of effort into their own products.

Google puts in some effort, but if it doesn't work they just purloin others’ products. See the Yelp story in the leaked FTC documents the article linked: http://graphics.wsj.com/google-ftc-report/

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#133

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

wolco wrote: post #76
jforman wrote: post #35

When I worked at Bing almost 20 years ago, the #1 search term was "Google". So maybe this is reasonable :) (#2 was "Gogle")

Bing was launched in 2009. Where were you working in the year 2000?

poor guy worked for Bing, it probably felt like decades.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#134

Post by pb7 »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #126
pb7 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The source is right above. Have you clicked on the link? They don't exactly hide the truth. If you click the link to their "400 sources", you'll be taken to a page that lists all of their "Instant Answers" sources only which supports their goal of providing information without leaving DDG. Interestingly, Google gets a lot of shit for scraping results from websites and not giving them the direct traffic, even in this very thread, but I guess we have lower expectations for a search engine that's 99% Bing.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#135

Post by hbharadwaj »

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…

Edge Chromium has Microsoft Translate which does a pretty good job as well

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#136

Post by tweetle_beetle »

pen2l wrote: post #2

Falls within the purview of their job of being an information-search tool I’d say. There are times when I want a specific piece of information as quickly as possible and with as few clicks as possible, and other times I’m doing more exploratory searches, it seems google lets me do both pretty well.

I think the issue is that Google did not launch as an "information-search tool". It slowly transitioned into one in line with advertising becoming its business model. Weirdly we are back where we started and I find the portal analogy actually very apt. Yes the technology has improved, but the Google of today is much closer to 2000 Yahoo![1] than 2000 Google[2] - trying to curate and own as much of the internet browsing experience as possible.

Taken to the extreme, Google would be very happy to keep a copy of every website and only let you browse the internet on its terms in its walled garden. We're already heading there with AMP. Do we want to sacrifice a couple of seconds of our time for that?

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20000229042533/http://search.yah...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20130122200020/http://www.google...

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#137

Post by wmeredith »

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…

When a better one comes along ... you'll never know.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#138

Post by IncRnd »

kartayyar wrote: post #80
dybber wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you bootstrap such a company? The solution as I see it is to forcefully break-up Google, such that these services can have their run as independent companies (Maps, flight search, product price comparison, etc.). This has been done before with big companies (e.g. break of Bell Systems into 7 companies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System )

The way Google: ship it and make it work really, really well. The product was so good that people noticed. They were able to take this and leverage this into being search for a really large property, like Back in the 90s there were lots of search engines. People didn't pick Google because it was hard to switch, they converged on Google because the product was that good - there was Infoseek, HotBot, AskJeeves, Alta Vi…

> People didn't pick Google because it was hard to switch, they converged on Google because the product was that good

That's not how I remember things from that time. I started to use Google, because it was faster than dogpile and the other oddly named search engines.

It wasn't a quality reason. There was the expectation that a search for information would take longer than a single click, so a little digging wasn't an issue.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#139

Post by tristan957 »

auganov wrote: post #129

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 suppo…

Privacy is a major feature. Morality is most definitely something a business can be better at. You can't just hand wave it away like it doesn't matter. DuckDuckGo might not give the best results, but I would trade that for privacy 10 times out of 10.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#140

Post by boogies »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #69
xwdv wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some would say maybe the little startups should have a chance.

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

> Any suggestions for alternative services that outperform Google’s?

Yes. Which one? This page seems full of people recommending DeepL, which is one I can personally recommend for Spanish, and others can swear by for any of the languages it supports. OpenStreetMap is great for more detailed and more frequently updated map data. The article shows how pathetic multiple competitors make Google Flights look https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/07/28/google-sea... (and it seems the industry rate 10+ other services above it https://www.frommers.com/slideshows/848046-the-10-best-and-w...). DuckDuckGo's search results are as good for me (not everyone), and it invented the instant answer (IIRC), has 2 click dark mode, bangs and other features, and is a good place to find more alternatives.

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