Google’s top search result is Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#201

Post by jacobr1 » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 5:08 PM UTC

gfxgirl wrote: post #152

boogies wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. This is patently false, and probably a reflection of the Google bubble you live in. DeepL is pretty objectively superior to Google, as evaluated by journalists who natively speak the languages it translates in the articles linked on their website. You can find plenty of in depth reviews online, and every one I've read has…

Google's flight service is not a booking service. It's flight search. It just redirects you to the airline in question. Personally I love it. It's so much faster than all the competitors. Further it not covered in ads. I just went to SkyScanner and there's an ad for fried chicken. Seriously WTF!

It provides a better search than, say, united's search. Especially if you are looking for partner-flights or more interesting layover-cities. But it also doesn't include southwest flights (most aggregators don't) which often have the best price for my home airport on short-hauls.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#202

Post by neya » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #168

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…

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. You: I wish people would build products that successfully compete with Google. Also you: It's fine if Google do things that stop their competitors successfully competing with Google. This is literally exactly the reason why anti-trust laws exist - to stop a company who are successf…

> unfairly dominating other areas

Out of curiosity, what exactly about Maps is unfair? They made money, they invested it in better mapping technology. You could say the same about Apple too, they bundled their Maps application with every iPhone sold which you couldn't even uninstall for a long time. And they had more money than Google too - yet their maps application was and still is garbage.

It just so happens Google Maps is the better product here and has nothing to do with anti-competitiveness. I was in China and I tried using both Apple and Google Maps (via VPN). And guess which one lead me to a wrong railway station?

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#203

Post by lhorie » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

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. I will get mad when those products have better alternatives but it's not the case.

Just think about it: where do you think the money to fund development of maps, translation etc comes from? Nobody pays a dime to use these services, so they clearly aren't self-sustaining.

Now think about your own income. Imagine google comes up with some way to provide the same skillset you offer by pouring ad money into researching some hypothetical singularity AI or whatever, and then offering that to your employers for free (in exchange for ad placement in your company's end product), causing you to lose not only your job, but your ability to get any related jobs anywhere.

That's obviously an extreme and highly hypothetical scenario, but it illustrates what anti-trust laws are supposed to stop.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#204

Post by boogies » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

anoncake wrote: post #200

boogies wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. This is patently false, and probably a reflection of the Google bubble you live in. DeepL is pretty objectively superior to Google, as evaluated by journalists who natively speak the languages it translates in the articles linked on their website. You can find plenty of in depth reviews online, and every one I've read has…

To be fair, DeepL doesn't support all the languages Google supports.

True (edit: and not my downvote), and Google Translate doesn't support all the languages Microsoft Translate supports: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23977310. But my point was that not only is “Google translate … has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality” absolutely false, but that Google Translate is not even way too close to as good as its competitors, and DeepL is a service that I can personally vouch for, and there's even broad consensus that it's at worst as bad as GT.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#205

Post by tenebrisalietum » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

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…

> search

There was a recent HN post about the declining quality of Google search in that most search results seem to be more and more leading to SEO spam. Is your experience with Google Search different?

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#206

Post by sarakayakomzin » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 5:28 PM UTC

unethical_ban wrote: post #174

Mirioron wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if Google search didn't send me to Google maps when I was looking for maps then I would explicitly go to Google maps. In that case there would be no chance for any competitor to do better.

Your logic is faulty. You weren't going to go to a competitor from the search page anyway.

...your logic is faulty.

Google doesn't compete in every market (yet).

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#207

Post by jefftk » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

elpool2 wrote: post #180

chris_f wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Is there a way we could get quick curated answers like this without deemphasizing search results?" Yes, here is an example of how it could work: https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=myocardial+infarction Disclaimer, I made this website.

But this website also deemphasizes search results in favor of curated answers, just like Google.

When I run the search on mobile I see six screens of information scraped from Wikipedia and NIH before it starts showing organic links.

This is good user experience, but it's the same "problem" that the original article is objecting to.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#208

Post by xapata » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 5:37 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #182

ehsankia wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word "Compete" here is misleading. It's rather: I wish people would build better products than Google's. According to you, Google should send users to a strictly worse app, so that it can become better over time? And unless it requires a lot of user data to become a better app, I don't see why it needs traffic from Google to become a better product. Once it is an arguably better product, then yes, Google should d…

Once it is an arguably better product, then yes, Google should definitely link to it first. Google Search should list the websites that best match the user's search terms ordered by a fair Pagerank score that doesn't emphasise Google's own properties. That's it. Google shouldn't be making subjective decisions about "site quality" (objective factors like speed, mobile optimization, malware etc are OK..). If I search f…

I care about speed, mobile optimization, and malware. Generalizing from my observation of myself, I expect others do as well.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#209

Post by cheez » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 5:51 PM UTC

jforman wrote: post #113

wolco wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I was at Microsoft, in MSN Search (which was later re-branded Bing). This was 2003.

The MSN brand had some good stuff. MSN messenger, the MSN browser (I loved it). Great work by that team.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#210

Post by lokar » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

I don't recall Google ever promising to be a "pure" web search engine, just indexing all the pages.

Quite the opposite, they said the goal was to organize and present information. The goal has always been the most relevant information given the query. Early on, that pretty much always meant a web page. More and more, they already know the answer and can present it with a better UX for the user.

Why should they be required to be a "pure" index of web pages?