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Google search's death by a thousand cuts

matt-rickard.com

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Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#221

Post by dmvdoug »

windexh8er wrote: post #209
DeathArrow wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wikipedia, the highest quality curated human-readable information repository I have some doubts about the quality of Wikipedia content. Everything that can be politicised is politicised , everything that can be played in order for someone to advance his/her plans or point of view is played. Apart from bad faith, some article lack relevant info or contain errors due the volunteer nature of it.

Being of the "highest quality", in this case, is comparative to the landscape we have available. With that said I believe it may be the highest quality open information repository. And if it's not - then what's better?

Your local university library and its ILL department.

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#222

Post by StrictDabbler »

hooby wrote: post #173

I feel that Google search has been slowly dying for many years now. Where in the past I could find documentation, forum-posts, wikis - concise information - these days I find SEO-optimised marketing fluff, link-farms, clickbait, long-form articles with thousands of words that ultimately say nothing, political tirades that don't make sense for any non-U.S.-citizen, and ads - tons and tons of ads. It would seem that it…

The other day I searched for "canned cabbage soup". The mobile website locked into a mode I've never seen before.

It would only provide blogspamish recipes for canning your own cabbage soup linked through the tiled suggestion interface. Not a single text-style link was returned and none of the results were pre-canned soups. I scanned though page after page without getting anything else.

Oddly, when I searched "canned cabbage soup history" it switched modes and started providing normal results, including the product and Wikipedia.

What strikes me about this is that I was actively searching for a product I wanted to buy. If there's any business case for ruining Google with weird specialty searches it would be selling products.

Why is there a "provide blogspam" mode?

Also, I'm now asked if I'm a robot at least five times a day.

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#223

Post by bamboozled »

halflings wrote: post #174
hsjqllzlfkf wrote: post #148

This is Google's inability to innovate. Google stated goal was the "organize the world's information". Nevertheless, they didn't come up with Wikipedia, the highest quality curated human-readable information repository. They also didn't come up with ChatGPT, arguably the first LLM good enough that can perform non trivial tasks of data recall and organization. Google had early success with search. Then decided to ceme…

> They also didn't come up with ChatGPT, arguably the first LLM good enough that can perform non trivial tasks of data recall and organization. Not only did Google make the main breakthroughs that all LLMs still rely on today (mainly attention architecture, and large scale training of DNNs), but they had a chatbot similar to ChatGPT (Meena [1]) way before ChatGPT was a thing. Granted: they didn't release it to the pu…

Also, regarding search, there are simply worthy competitors now. This is a bigger deal than I think people credit for. There truly was a time, maybe even ~ 2 years ago where even though it was broken Google was still the best. Kagi, while costing money to use, it fantastic.

YouTube is just bollocks now too, it contains a stunning amount of junk content and clickbait.

If someone tells me they learned something from YouTube, I actively question their authority on the matter at all. I didn't feel this way 2 years ago. YT seemed to be a generally credible source of information. Words cannot describe how polluted my suggestions are. I actually find it disturbing how much fake, incorrect and bias information is being suggest to me all the time. If I took it all on face value I'd be an idiot.

I've noticed recently that even people I thought were pretty credible have upped the clickbait severely in recent times. I guess this is what it takes to get seen but it's at the point where I just don't open YouTube unless I already know what I'm looking for so I can avoid it.

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#224

Post by dmvdoug »

consilient wrote: post #183
tgv wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few days ago, some people were discussing Schumpeter's idea that (very) large companies drive innovation. I'm curious what they would make of Google Search.

The core of Schumpeter's position here is that innovation requires making large long-term capital investments in risky projects, which small firms can't afford. Things are somewhat different today then when Schumpeter was writing. On the one hand, governments and venture capital firms are now major sources of R&D funding. On the other hand, the growth of the financial sector has to some degree crowded out higher-risk…

The financialization of like, literally everything, makes most of that “classic” work of political economics people like to cite wobble badly. Hell, so does advertising if you look at the classic Austrian Econ stuff. It’s invisible in Mises’ Human Action (because it barely existed at the time! no fault of his I guess), and it causes massive tensions if you try to confront his framework with it.

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#225

Post by danpalmer »

mitchell209 wrote: post #186
danpalmer wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On why , or on whether . I personally find Google Search to be pretty great, and recently switched back from DuckDuckGo which I had been using for ~4 years, because I found I was having to use !g in half my searches. It's also noticeable faster. When I'm looking for an answer, I find Google much more likely to give me the answer. So I'm not convinced that search quality is declining. I'd love to see a deep dive on wh…

This is more the fault of DDG / Bing being awful, than it is Google doing a good job. I’ve found Kagi and Brave at worst are on par with Google without being bloated with ads. And oftentimes they’re simply better.

I think it's unsurprising that a paid search engine (Kagi), or a likely unprofitable and optionally paid search engine (Brave), are better in some ways.

I don't find Google search to be bloated with ads. If I search for hotly competitive keywords then I do see ads, but the same is true where there is ad inventory on other sites, and when there isn't ad inventory that's not the true UX and it's only a matter of time until the ads arrive.

However, the majority of my searches are fact-finding, and I get facts, with no ads, or I don't even see the ads because I've got the answer before I get to them.

This is why I'd like to see a deep dive on this stuff, because the HN opinion is just not one that resonates with me at all at the moment.

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#226

Post by DougEiffel »

briandear wrote: post #195
DougEiffel wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate or provide examples? I have never seen what you're describing on Wikipedia.

The RFK Jr. article. Here’s the talk section: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Robert_F._Kennedy_Jr .

I find that talk page fascinating. I have only rarely looked into how the sausage is made over at Wikipedia, but I'm intrigued every time I do.

Not that anyone asked, but I think he is absolutely guilty of spreading vaccine propaganda - however, I think one editor has a very good point about how this should be approached. Here is what they said:

>I too would avoid the pejorative word "propaganda" on WP:TONE grounds. If they must be included, terms like "propaganda" and "conspiracy theories" should not be stated in wikivoice. Instead, it should be stated dispassionately what the sources say. See Deepak Chopra for some examples of more appropriate wording: "His discussions of quantum healing have been characterised as technobabble"; "The ideas Chopra promotes have regularly been criticized by medical and scientific professionals as pseudoscience." (emphasis mine). HappyWanderer15 (talk) 12:46, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#227

Post by danpalmer »

throwaw12 wrote: post #140
danpalmer wrote: post #100

> What if Wikipedia started charging or restricting API access? Wikipedia has a downloadable data dump that would cost almost nothing to serve to Google, and it has an organisational mandate to make that data available. If they decide to charge for access to that I'm sure Google can afford it. Let's not throw around completely unrealistic hypotheticals.

> If they decide to charge for access to that I'm sure Google can afford it Sure, Google can afford it. How about asking for 10% of revenue when Wikipedia data is used to show search results? Would Google agree or starts another rival to wikipedia and kill it after 4 years? Systems are so complex that, it is very difficult to predict how they would behave given parts of system gets impacted by other constraints (Redd…

Well that would just be obviously against their mandate. They're a not-for-profit dedicated to providing an open encyclopedia, requiring billions from likely their main distribution channel would be nonsensical.

Despite the recent actions of Twitter and Reddit, last ditch attempts to maintain any relevance in the public consciousness, most organisations act relatively rationally at a high level, and Wikimedia has the added bonus of not needing to make a profit or being publicly traded.

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#228

Post by dmvdoug »

LaundroMat wrote: post #62
Quekid5 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, same for me. It really seems high-quality search is fundamentally in opposition to serving ads, alas. (At least once every page in existence probably serves ads via the search operator's network.)

That's exactly what Brin and Page said in the paper where they presented Google... "[W]e expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers" and "[W]e believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm." Both from The An…

have they ever addressed this in later years? Like, what was their justification for Google becoming the AdMonster it did?

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#229

Post by masfuerte »

briandear wrote: post #195
DougEiffel wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate or provide examples? I have never seen what you're describing on Wikipedia.

The RFK Jr. article. Here’s the talk section: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Robert_F._Kennedy_Jr .

Note that the URL needs a period on the end. HN strips it. I was very confused by the blank page with no history.

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#230

Post by imranq »

Seems like a lot of confirmation bias on this thread, but I've found google search to be fine for most of the search queries I've used. The real threat seems to be chatGPT which has been a great timesaver for information that needs to be customized
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