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

Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

sparktoro.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 312 posts

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#151

Post by eitland »

abhijat wrote: post #148
eitland wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a user of Kagi and search.marginalia.nu I can tell you: Quite a bit. So much that now that I have what "everyone" asked Google for for years - that is blacklists - I hardly use them. Why? Because with Kagi I get much better results out of the box. I am fairly sure Googlers will tell me there are multiple safeguards to prevent the inclusion of Google ads from affecting ranking, to which I just have to say that the…

I switched to Kagi in June last year. I just realized I tried it initially because I wanted to try out blocking sites in search results, and I have only ever needed to block three domains.

Thats exactly what I am talking about.

Kagi is kind of like Google in 2009, seriously good coverage, good ranking

... but also:

- more modern

- more features (summarizer, bangs like in DDG, FastGPT and probably a few I forgot)

- blocklists for websites (and also options to pin, raise and lower)

- with actual support: report a bug and you get an answer from a real engineer, a follow up when it is fixed and a shout out in the relevant release notes

- no tracking

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#152

Post by GTP »

benterix wrote: post #137
vouaobrasil wrote: post #127

Sometimes I wonder how much better the internet would be hits on Google weren't directly tied to revenue from Google itself through its ad program. I am certain Google has made the internet and the world a worse place to live.

It's not black and white. There was a lot of junk that was forced on us and that was removed thanks to Google. But I agree the direct relationship is inherently corrupting.

Larry Page and Sergei Brin even stated very clearly in their original paper that using ads as revenue source can impact the quality of results returned from the search engine.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#153

Post by nottorp »

isaacfrond wrote: post #122

Most of the factors in ranking a page are no surprise. But i was surprised that having Product reviews on your site is apparently a demotion? Surely, many people are searching to find just that?

We are, but I’m not sure there are any real product reviews left on the internet.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#154

Post by eitland »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #147
vouaobrasil wrote: post #127

Sometimes I wonder how much better the internet would be hits on Google weren't directly tied to revenue from Google itself through its ad program. I am certain Google has made the internet and the world a worse place to live.

The fundamental problem with the Internet is that people don't want to pay for things on it. No matter what, whatever we ended up with was going to be shitty and exploitive.

Now you have a chance. Kagi is there.

I made my decision two years ago and I would probably do it even if it was just on par with Google, to support competition and to avoid supporting Google.

But in hindsight it is just exeptionally much better. There is no going back unless Kagi does something monumentally stupid.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#155

Post by vouaobrasil »

DarkNova6 wrote: post #141
vouaobrasil wrote: post #127

Sometimes I wonder how much better the internet would be hits on Google weren't directly tied to revenue from Google itself through its ad program. I am certain Google has made the internet and the world a worse place to live.

You mean the way Google worked originally? The founders were very careful in creating a barrier between ads and search. A barrier whose erosion has been well documented over the last 10 years.

A barrier whose only purpose was to establish trust so that it could be later taken advantage of.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#156

Post by wslh »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #127

Sometimes I wonder how much better the internet would be hits on Google weren't directly tied to revenue from Google itself through its ad program. I am certain Google has made the internet and the world a worse place to live.

Google was really great and revolutionary, they helped zillions of small companies to thrive. It was another cycle.

Then, now, it is like media before the 90s: you need to pay a lot of money to be in the center page of the newspaper.

But, hopefully we are talking about LLMs now, seems like one of the answers to search engines in general. Beyond AI, I see LLMs as a good evolution from PageRank.

A little bit general but lately I use the expression: "Complexity as Scam". Google always pointed to their "algorithms" and played with this term as if algorithms couldn't be adjusted to whatever you want to be. Initially the coined term was sound because it was based on a scientific paper and eventually it evolution but it seems like the PageRank original idea has detoured from being a "pure" graph algorithm.

Another context where I use "Complexity as Scam" is Web3. It is like Matryoshka dolls where there is always one more step of complexity to probe a point, but it never ends.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#157

Post by L-four »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #147
vouaobrasil wrote: post #127

Sometimes I wonder how much better the internet would be hits on Google weren't directly tied to revenue from Google itself through its ad program. I am certain Google has made the internet and the world a worse place to live.

The fundamental problem with the Internet is that people don't want to pay for things on it. No matter what, whatever we ended up with was going to be shitty and exploitive.

It's not that people don't want to pay it's that it's difficult to pay small sums. The web browsers could solve this problem but they make money from ads so it's not in there best interest.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#158

Post by vouaobrasil »

linsomniac wrote: post #138
vouaobrasil wrote: post #127

Sometimes I wonder how much better the internet would be hits on Google weren't directly tied to revenue from Google itself through its ad program. I am certain Google has made the internet and the world a worse place to live.

Did you experience the Internet before google? The idea of a world where Alta Vista won is truly chilling.

Yes, I did! I used to use Yahoo search where the results were more hand-curated and people did not create websties for intensive commercial purposes with useless SEO fluff like it is today.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#160

Post by eitland »

linsomniac wrote: post #149
msk-lywenn wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some way, didn't Google become Alta Vista?

How so? My memory of Alta Vista was so-so search results with a top page littered with garbage.

Exactly like Google since 2011 +/- 2 years (the so-so search results part) and Google the last few years (the littered with garbage part)?

I have used Google since probably 2001-2002 sometime and a number of other search engines before. It is rather obvious to me and I have writing and screenshots from around the time quality took a dive that supports it.

Post reply on HN