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Google’s top search result is Google

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Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#231

Post by jaggirs »

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…

Then you should get mad, because there are better alternatives to google translate (deepl).

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#232

Post by wolco »

harshitaneja wrote: post #95
wolco wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PageRank wasn't natural. Google properities started with a score of 10. Google friends 5-9. Your site 0.

Source?

Lived through it. Microsoft had a 9. Anything list on the dmoz had a 4.

Page Rank doesn't work if the seeded values are all set to 0. If everyone started at 0 they pass on nothing. Google needed a way to seed. They assigned the highest value to themselves scaling down to other giants, universities, dmoz sites, etc.

Pagerank is a reputation calculator. You still need to define at least one cool person. Much better with thousands to varying degrees.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#233

Post by eggsnbacon1 »

drusepth wrote: post #230

Makes sense to me. Google Flights is amazing, Google Stocks is better than my broker (and way easier/faster), Translate doesn't even have a decent competitor, and Restaurants isn't perfect but just makes it easier to get to Google Maps. As a consumer, this is great. As a small business owner, I'm not very concerned about Google usurping pieces of my site into a widget. If the entirety of a business/site can be replac…

Competitors have a hard time getting off the ground because the dominant player is promoting its own products. Classic monopoly. Competition won't be good if nobody uses them.

Google maps might be a good example, MapQuest and Terraserver used to be better for navigation and satellite photos. Did they fail because of business reasons or self promotion? Hard to know, but Google pulled the same shit as MS got antitrust for. Bundling their own maps app pre-installed on their dominant mobile OS

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#234

Post by dybber »

boarnoah wrote: post #112
dybber wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you bootstrap such a company? The solution as I see it is to forcefully break-up Google, such that these services can have their run as independent companies (Maps, flight search, product price comparison, etc.). This has been done before with big companies (e.g. break of Bell Systems into 7 companies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System )

Most of those independent companies wouldn't have a good revenue stream no? I really doubt Google Maps is sustainable simply by selling API access. It and especially the more niche google products seem to be provided as a value add to their other services (i.e search in this case).

Google Maps is essentially TripAdvisor with better search, but fewer reviews. In addition, Google Maps is probably the most used GPS routing software these days.

They would do fine standalone, either following a path like TripAdvisor or Garmin or both.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#235

Post by alienchow »

Slartie wrote: post #64
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…

Actually, on text translations, DeepL nowadays outclasses Google Translate IMHO. The only downside is that they don't appear to offer some kind of transparent website translate feature ("put a URL in and it translates the entire site, with layout kept intact"), at least not for free. But if I happen to have a paragraph or so in some foreign language and want that translated to some language I can understand, DeepL ha…

Anecdote disclaimer.

Learning Spanish right now so I'm excited to learn about this better translator. The very first word I tested was "por favor".

DeepL detected it as English and translated it into Spanish to give "por favor" == "por favor".

Same for "una mas". To be fair, it worked once I properly accented the "a".

I'll be using this for longer sentences instead.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#236

Post by ss7pro »

mrkramer wrote: post #55
martinskou wrote: post #6

Search is essential infrastructure for the internet and should not be monopolized. It should be free, uncluttered, distributed and transparent. The problem is not Google, its the lack of good alternatives, only DDG really.

Alternatives don't matter when distribution channels are controlled and locked in. Google controls 70% browser market share on PC( https://tinyurl.com/yxwjwnv7 ) and 64% mobile browser market share( https://tinyurl.com/y4uufb9d ). But I think Google's problem is not dominant market position but slow pace of service quality improvement. Searching on Google 10 years ago and today feels way too similar and not much impr…

It changed a lot I spend much less times searching and rather most of the time reading what I was looking for. It was opposite 10 years ago.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#237

Post by vntok »

john-shaffer wrote: post #147
vntok wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google does not force companies to implement ReCaptcha on their own Web properties.

Many government websites use reCAPTCHA. I do not have any choice in using it. If I were to block Google to avoid tracking, I could not function in society.

Again, Google is not forcing them to use ReCAPTCHA anywhere. You seem to have an issue with that program, so why are you taking it out on Google instead of on your government?

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#238

Post by mrkramer »

rydre wrote: post #169
mrkramer wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah ok I got it. I like your idea it is similar to my. Currently what you can do as a website owner is to use Google Adsense ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_AdSense ) and then you are kind of sharing revenue with Google but only when someone visits and clicks Google Ad on your website.

> Currently what you can do as a website owner is to use Google Adsense Nooo! This is not what I meant. I mean that embedding a search engine to your website without the user moving back to Google. So every website has a search engine for the entire internet. Not just Google. I want search to be kind of affiliate revenue to Amazon. So the developer embeds a search engine on the search page of a news website they get…

Isn't centralized search better than decentralized? One would assume centralized solution is more feature rich and flexible.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#239

Post by magicalist »

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…

> Google Search should list the websites that best match the user's search terms

Ok, but define "best match".

> ordered by a fair Pagerank score that doesn't emphasise Google's own properties

Even ignoring link farming (which already ruined a lot of the web the first time around), inbound links to content is a proxy for quality of content, not an actual measure of quality of content.

It's just offloading the subjective part of search quality to the wisdom of the crowd, which often does not work out.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#240

Post by mrkramer »

ss7pro wrote: post #236
mrkramer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatives don't matter when distribution channels are controlled and locked in. Google controls 70% browser market share on PC( https://tinyurl.com/yxwjwnv7 ) and 64% mobile browser market share( https://tinyurl.com/y4uufb9d ). But I think Google's problem is not dominant market position but slow pace of service quality improvement. Searching on Google 10 years ago and today feels way too similar and not much impr…

It changed a lot I spend much less times searching and rather most of the time reading what I was looking for. It was opposite 10 years ago.

"reading what I was looking for" Elaborate. Reading the content you found or reading your browsing history?

And I meant search quality is rather the same.

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