Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#171

Post by memorable » Wed, May 18, 2022, 2:34 PM UTC

DashAnimal wrote: post #150

baggachipz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Kagi[1] in private beta; they plan to launch a subscription model very soon. I hope it works out. [1] https://kagi.com/faq

I just searched "how to fix a flat tire" on both Google and Kagi and got pretty similar results. Different in display but no .edu links in sight.

Neeva user here. The first few results on both Neeva and Google are the same. The same with video results.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#172

Post by b112 » Wed, May 18, 2022, 2:34 PM UTC

baggachipz wrote: post #13

Google is so unbearable because they are no longer interested in you finding the answer to your query; they're interested in selling your query and its context to the highest bidder. That conflict of interest manifests in what Google has become.

They also have no focus, as you and a reply essentially say.

For example, all the stupid aliasing of search terms, and dropping of search terms.

This is helpful if you want to optimize for "sorta close, sell things!" such as "maytag A4453 fix timer", but you want advertisers to latch on to maytag=washing machine, and ignore the rest.

And it also helps when websites with google ads on them them get higher SEO, because suggesting that site might get a click, and profit!

EG, suggest a blog/spam site, because google ads are on it.

And it also helps with google voice search! Did the speaker mean here/hear? Did they mean Danny/Daniel/Danson when they said Dan?

Google has too much genericization in its search, and it is for profit naturally, but I think it is lazy profit, and it is becoming worse yearly.

And it is all their fault, no one else's.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#173

Post by jefftk » Wed, May 18, 2022, 2:35 PM UTC

thepasswordis wrote: post #165

DashAnimal wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just searched "how to fix a flat tire" on both Google and Kagi and got pretty similar results. Different in display but no .edu links in sight.

Why would a .edu help you learn to fix a tire? That seems like a YouTube question, not something a school would teach, and if they did, not something that would go online.

The article we're discussing is about limiting your search results to ".edu" domains to remove bloat, and gives an example of an https://www2.latech.edu/~bmagee/303win97/Group3/2245.html which does have this information on changing a tire.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#174

Post by bkobren » Wed, May 18, 2022, 2:36 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #69

Beltiras wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. What the search space needs is a different business model. I have no idea what it could be. I'm quite sure a subscription model would fail. Micropayments have not taken off. How can we fund meaningful search divorced from an ad business?

> How can we fund meaningful search divorced from an ad business? The only way you have not listed is gov't funding. And i dont think i would trust a gov't run search engine either. May be a well meaning librarian institution could make it work. > I'm quite sure a subscription model would fail. this hasn't really been tried yet - it could work, who knows?

Hi there, you should give Neeva a try. Disclosure, I work for them, but we were the first to introduce a subscription, interest/growth has been really strong so far. Neeva offers a freemium model (free basic and premium for $5/Month which includes paid versions of VPN and a password manager), you can connect third party apps like dropbox and email putting all your personal docs in one search along with websearch, both versions are ad-free and private, it's available to anyone in U.S. and we are building our own independent stack to make the search experience unique and better.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#175

Post by throwmamatrain » Wed, May 18, 2022, 2:36 PM UTC

thepasswordis wrote: post #165

DashAnimal wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just searched "how to fix a flat tire" on both Google and Kagi and got pretty similar results. Different in display but no .edu links in sight.

Why would a .edu help you learn to fix a tire? That seems like a YouTube question, not something a school would teach, and if they did, not something that would go online.

I think the idea is that the SNR of .edu TLD is likely higher than all other TLDs. Probably true for now.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#176

Post by titzer » Wed, May 18, 2022, 2:38 PM UTC

baggachipz wrote: post #13

Google is so unbearable because they are no longer interested in you finding the answer to your query; they're interested in selling your query and its context to the highest bidder. That conflict of interest manifests in what Google has become.

It is sad because I spent nearly 10 years at Google and nearly all the people I met were well-meaning, seemingly harmless, engineering-oriented, and data-driven. But the configuration of people that makes up the superorganism that is Google nowadays is driven by both local incentives and a broad top incentive to grow. Scale to more computation, more storage, more bandwidth, and with lower overhead--morally, those are neutral to positive, IMHO, but they are put in service of the real goal at the end of the day: swallow more money. More revenue, more markets, more ads, more engagement, more watch time...muscle out the competition, dominate. 20% YoY growth for nearly 25 years running, and suddenly you get huge, scary numbers. And you have to do insane things to keep that exponential curve from regressing to an S-curve like the laws of physics dictate it must.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#177

Post by buo » Wed, May 18, 2022, 2:38 PM UTC

guerrilla wrote: post #162

frmdstryr wrote: post #128

I recently found https://commoncrawl.org/ and started working on my own personal search engine. I'm surprised how easy it is to actually get decent results with just metadata that show up nowhere in Google/DDG.

What's the license for this? It isn't obvious from the website and I got bored of looking.

Not a license, but there are some terms of use: https://commoncrawl.org/terms-of-use/

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#178

Post by deelly » Wed, May 18, 2022, 2:39 PM UTC

greybox wrote: post #70

I switched to using kagi.com a while ago, and I've never looked back. I've tried to use duckduckgo before but just ended up using '!g' most of the time. Kagi is in a whole other league. It's on par with, if not better than google search. I highly recommend it. When they introduce the paid tier I'm sure as hell going to subscribe to it. At this point I would trade my Netflix subscription for it.

Could you show some examples of search results?

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#179

Post by BurningFrog » Wed, May 18, 2022, 2:39 PM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #120

baggachipz wrote: post #13

Google is so unbearable because they are no longer interested in you finding the answer to your query; they're interested in selling your query and its context to the highest bidder. That conflict of interest manifests in what Google has become.

There are only two choices. Either Google are no longer interested in finding the best answers to your queries. Or as you point out: They don't care, that is no longer what they do. I cannot imagine it being easy, but I find it hard to believe that Google aren't able to weed out the worst offenders. For a large number of queries the results are all SEO spam. Try searching for anything related to health and get a usef…

My thought is that the Web has adapted to Search.

When Google started, the web was honest and innocent. People linked to the pages they liked, and Google could crowd source those links and raise up the most popular pages.

Now most of the web is lies meant to confuse search engines. Figuring out what pages are good is no longer a feasible task for software.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#180

Post by bkobren » Wed, May 18, 2022, 2:39 PM UTC

verve_rat wrote: post #62

Beltiras wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I might be a target audience for them and willing to pay a nominal fee monthly for good search I'm quite sure there isn't a market for it.

I wouldn't be so sure. I bet there is a viable business in selling a quality search engine. Maybe not dominate the market, take over the world, but not every thing has to be that.

We have been working on exactly that at Neeva and the response has been very positive in terms of growth and adoption. Neeva offers a freemium model (free basic and premium for $5/Month which includes paid versions of VPN and a password manager), you can connect third party apps like dropbox and email putting all your personal docs in one search along with websearch, both versions are ad-free and private, it's available to anyone in U.S. and we are building our own independent stack to make the search experience unique and better.