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Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

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Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#151

Post by makeitdouble »

yunohn wrote: post #49

Every time this comes up, I don’t understand what the alternative is supposed to be. X (Midjourney in this case) may/not be trademarked in the user’s country - so what makes X so special that Google/others should rank this one over others? Does this mean X owns the keyword and other related searches on Google forever? That sounds worse than domain squatting! Speaking of, quite often, X.com is already registered, so c…

You're describing the exact (complex) problem that Google Search was born to solve. And at some point they successfully did.

If we agree it's something they can't solve anymore, letting them pay to stay is a disservice to the users.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#152

Post by nmstoker »

ares623 wrote: post #32
freediver wrote: post #7

They still get away with it as ‘only’ 1% complain and Google thinks they don’t matter. We built our entire company for that 1%.

How is Kagi for non-US folks? I've tried switching to DDG a while back but the experience for me, living outside the US, was not great. Sure, programming related searches were pretty good, but everything else was not. Does Kagi have a better localized experience?

I find Kagi pretty good - I'm UK based.

I upgraded my phone a few days back and when search defaulted back to Google I realised how worthwhile my subscription is.

It's not all perfect, for instance I would love to figure out how to stop all map searches sticking with them: sorry Google is just lightyears ahead there so I'd always prefer that. But generally they're about the right amount of customisability.

The killer feature for me is being able to bury sites so you never ever get results from them ever again and to slightly bump up/down results for particular reasons (your own, not due to someone else paying an ad placement fee!)

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#154

Post by nerdponx »

owenthejumper wrote: post #112
mattigames wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But like always they didn't stop once they were a bit profitable with a few ads, instead they got greedier and greedier and made their product worse once they captured most of the market, I have wonder if there can exist some variant of capitalism that punishes becoming a bit too greedy, like a soft ceiling (tied to the minimum wage) over which most of the profits go to taxes, and a hard one where all profits over th…

That capitalism technically already exists in the US. We have very strong monopoly laws. It's just...nobody is enforcing them. Unlike the 70's and 80's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System

Biden's FTC chair tried her best, but it didn't go anywhere because she had no support and Trump put an end to it. But both sides amirite?

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#156

Post by TeMPOraL »

leakycap wrote: post #100
evertedsphere wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also true on Apple's app stores, to be fair. I didn't know this until I got a MacBook Pro recently and my assumption that Apple's controls would be tighter than Google's was proven quite wrong when I opened the Mac App Store for the first rime.

The Mac App Store is such a wasteland. I don't know why Apple doesn't provide it a budget and some real human curation. The average person searching for Microsoft Word, which is on the App Store, gets screens of templates and junky overpriced apps.

For all of those app stores, the current approach prints them money and lets them claim impartiality, while still allowing some control through acceptance rules, ToSes and automated security measures. All those things scale well. Any other approach I can think of ends up having corner cases that involve human support or interfacing with regulatory systems - and these things do not scale well.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#157

Post by ocdtrekkie »

mc3301 wrote: post #120
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am highly suspicious tech markets do not see realistic average Google behavior for whatever reason. The pervasive belief in tech that Google Search is even passable suggests people in the Valley or even Austin aren't getting the experience most people do. I recall a Googler once suggesting to me that Googlers seeing ads might look like ad fraud to advertisers, so I'm not positive Googlers dogfood how bad this is ei…

I'd go as far to guess that the tech-literate people (who would be both less susceptible to clicking on enshitified links and more likely to report or discuss them) have, somewhere in their tracked-data-portfolio, a "don't serve too much garbage to this person, they aren't gullible and they'll tell people we're serving garbage" setting. Apologies for the weird grammar.

It's certainly possible, and maybe not even maliciously: Advertisers are refining their targeting to get clicks, the best advertisers will only annoy people likely to click an ad. The problem with giant algorithmic platforms is often things go off the rails simply due to nobody at the helm understanding what the platform is doing anymore.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#160

Post by kwar13 »

beckthompson wrote: post #20

Its sad but I think at this point its kind of a safety issue not to use an ad blocker. Those results are not clearly ads and I've clicked on fake links in the past when they were.

Absolutely. I cannot use anything online anymore without pihole + ublock
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