Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google’s top search result is Google

themarkup.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 317 posts

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#141

Post by 1_player »

chris_f wrote: post #121
sidibe wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thanks for the heads up. I did some quick tests and it’s much better than DDG and 2020 Google, at least for my use case.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#142

Post by edoceo »

athenot wrote: post #73
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…

The thing is, increasingly I'm catching it returning wrong answers. A few days I was looking up the approximate weight of a cup of flour to do a recipe conversion, and the "helpful answer" was pulled from some random site and was about 15% off-base compared to the median from a handful of other sites, including from flour companies. I've observed similar bad results when looking up information about medications… I fe…

Well, one cup (volume) of flour can vary pretty widely in weight (108-138g in my notebook). Bleached, whole, Rye, AP, etc and even same type across brands. A variance of 15% is not too odd from my baking experience.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#143

Post by magicalist »

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…

> There certainly did used to be competition to Google Translate but Google crushed them by promoting their own services (which came later)[1].

Yahoo was the search engine that crushed altavista, then ultimately bought babelfish and let it rot, all several years before google translate came out.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#145

Post by input_sh »

andrepd wrote: post #107
hrktb wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Momondo, Skyscanner, TripAdvisor, Expedia.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#146

Post by tristan957 »

jjcon wrote: post #66
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that it "makes sense" for companies to become evil monopolies when they are capable of doing so is a problem. It's like a big hole in our economic system where everything breaks down and grinds to a halt.

> The fact that it "makes sense" for companies to become evil monopolies when they are capable of doing so is a problem I’m no google fan but I don’t think evil is an appropriate word nor would I call them a monopoly when it comes to search. There are plenty of other options out there from all over the world, the fact that they aren’t that great isn’t googles fault (and it would need to be for them to be considered a…

From the article: 9/10 searches in the US come from Google.

There are lots of great search engines. But when Google has the largest share of web analytics and can literally track you around the internet, how can other search engines who respect you as a user even have a chance? Give search engines a level playing field. Google is the default search engine on the most popular web browser. Google is the default search engine on the largest mobile operating system. Please stop defending Google. They have a monopoly on search, and its time for them to get the MS IE treatment.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#147

Post by john-shaffer »

vntok wrote: post #124
andrepd wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Many government websites use reCAPTCHA. I do not have any choice in using it. If I were to block Google to avoid tracking, I could not function in society.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#148

Post by rondennis »

I feel Google has turned on its pledge of doing no evil. It is not shamelessly stealing publishers content and displaying it in the featured snippets. So the searcher has really no incentive of clicking on the search result anymore. He is getting all the information on Google itself.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#149

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#150

Post by gfxgirl »

ViViDboarder wrote: post #122
hnlmorg wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 st…

not my experience. The experience at Google Fllghts is 100x better than any other flight search service. It's like the difference between Google Maps when it shipped and Mapquest. Mapquest was instantly a joke with its server side rendered pages. Google Flights is fast. Every other site is slow.
Post reply on HN