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Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

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Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#201

Post by marginalia_nu »

eitland wrote: post #160
linsomniac wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think over time the story has become that AV and Yahoo were overtaken by Google because the latter had a cleaner design, which if you think about it for more than a moment doesn't really constitute much of a moat.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#202

Post by tjpnz »

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.

How much of that is due to ad-tech companies like Google conditioning people into thinking that way? What if online payments weren't so god awful and allowed people to throw in a few dollars as easily as they might at a toll booth? That's still an unsolved problem too. Credit card companies have solidified their involvement in every facet of the process and the alternatives are non-starters for frictionless commerce.

I'm still happy to put my money where my mouth is and do pay for services which are genuinely useful to me. But this is not the kind of internet I imagined when growing up.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#204

Post by eitland »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #201
eitland wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think over time the story has become that AV and Yahoo were overtaken by Google because the latter had a cleaner design, which if you think about it for more than a moment doesn't really constitute much of a moat.

Google was also technically better when it released and importantly there was no way to buy ones way to the top.

Back then I think people mostly agreed that the results that ranked on top in Google generally were there because of criteria that benefited the end user.

I mean, even as crazy as Google results has been the last few years they have still managed to be better than Bing and DDG who both manages to have worse ranking and also like Google completely ignore my doublequotes.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#205

Post by UI_at_80x24 »

L-four wrote: post #157
Workaccount2 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And this was one of the hopes/goals/dreams that crypto offered that I really wish had come true.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#206

Post by SquareWheel »

BillFranklin wrote: post #145
BillFranklin wrote: post #139

FYI, it's much easier to read the linked GitHub code via the published docs at https://hexdocs.pm/google_api_content_warehouse/0.4.0/api-re...

In particular, https://hexdocs.pm/google_api_content_warehouse/0.4.0/Google... Notably, for people on HN, it looks like there is indeed an internal initiative to promote small personal blogs :-) > smallPersonalSite (type: number(), default: nil) - Score of small personal site promotion go/promoting-personal-blogs-v1

Well, maybe. It's a factor that a twiddler can influence, but we don't know if that's done positively or negatively. It might also be more conditional, like for specific types of queries.

For example, a small, personal blog might be great for solving a specific technical problem ("my dishwasher of model XXX has YYY problem"), but might be terrible for something like giving public health advice.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#207

Post by eitland »

jacob019 wrote: post #170
eitland wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm a Kagi user too. I like your enthusiasm, but I can't say it's been all that life changing for me. DuckDuckGo is ok too, I still use it on some machines when I don't feel like logging in. GPT has been more life changing.

Don't know what I am doing wrong but except the first few times I really didn't get good results with Kagi.

It might be that I rely a lot on precise queries and doublequoted words and also cannot get myself to use the conversational style that at least Google seems to prefer now.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#208

Post by eitland »

Nevolihs wrote: post #162
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 actually use pinning, blocking and raising/lowering the value of individual sites every day. I wish this is the direction search engines went in the first place and it's the direction I hope Kagi continues. I want a personalized search engine that's personalized by me, not by a company trying to profile me and make money off of my clicks.

I am all for Kagi keeping that feature. If for nothing else then to rub it in the face of every googler who have argued that it was impossible.

And if you use it I am happy, that gives Kagi an incentive to keep it around.

I'm just saying that for me the results are so good out of the box that with a couple of exceptions I never had to block anything.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#209

Post by josefx »

heresie-dabord wrote: post #166
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.

Instead of a semantic Web of knowledge, we got "grep the HTML... with ads".

You dropped the -v . Modern day Google seems fine tuned to return results that contain everything except for the words I searched for.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#210

Post by packetlost »

eitland wrote: post #136
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.

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 dunno, the first thing I did was blacklist G**ksf*rG**ks from my search results (and others, of course) and I couldn't be happier.
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