Google is FUBAR • Hacker News Board

Re: Google is FUBAR

#241

Post by cbracken » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 7:41 AM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #236

yanw wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use the toggle to turn off the social stuff then.

I still think it's very poor design that the toggle is: 1 - Completely unlabeled, nor is the icon indicative/clear. 2 - Not sticky . It will turn itself back on, even though this is neither implied nor stated in the UI. 3 - The only way to actually turn it off is to dig into your search settings - what percentage of your users actually know that exists, much less think about looking there?

On stickiness: search settings - turn off personalized results.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#242

Post by magicalist » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 7:45 AM UTC

mark_integerdsv wrote: post #232

fpgeek wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And during her frantic searching, his girlfriend won't try something as simple as "python programming book"? I find that hard to believe, especially if her default association for "python" is the snake.

I'm almost certain she would use a more sensible search term. In fact: she'd most likely have the title already, having picked the brains of a friend or colleague. You seem to have missed the point of my (admittedly flimsy) example though. What I am trying to illustrate is that the alleged relevance of a set of results biased on the basis of an individual's profile is incredibly insular (and harmful) if it's there at…

I hope you aren't alluding to anything as ridiculous as "search neutrality". There is no such thing. There are certainly less optimal results, in several dimensions with a poorly defined fitness landscape, but that complexity is exactly why its so ridiculous to talk about any search results "reflecting what is on the Internet".

You have provided no metric for that statement, so how could it even be measured?

There is too much on the internet for you to read it all. Finding what you want at some particular time is going to require a curator, and they are going to be biased.

(besides, the overfitting you describe isn't exactly the hardest problem to figure out and fix (just mix in some other python results and that related results thing that's already there). The hard part is quickly identifying that you actually are affecting users negatively and not just the guy that thinks everyone should have to look at nextag results)

Re: Google is FUBAR

#243

Post by bambax » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 7:50 AM UTC

Jach wrote: post #187

bambax wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we know something of your interests (based on G+ and/or search), isn't suggesting more relevant content to you on Youtube (as a purely hypothetical example) a good thing? No, it's not. Not because of "privacy" concerns or this whole silly "evil" debate, but because YOU'LL GUESS WRONG. I have many interests. I never email anyone about my search queries because I do searches about programming, and I exchange mail…

Google's an AI company. If they are guessing wrong, then they're doing poorly as a company and will suffer financially. They have every incentive to make sure it guesses wrong as infrequently as possible. You have many interests, but a finite number, they can all play a role in the model of you. Similarly with people you know. Now, if you're suggesting that for some reason there's an inherent "you will never be able…

> You have many interests, but a finite number

I'm not even one person. We have many computers in our home; I'm logged in to all of them, Google-wise, but they are used by my wife, the woman who looks after our kids, our children themselves, etc.

It would be very impractical to have each person log in as herself before they can search anything on Google (and my kids are too young to even be allowed to have a Google account!)

For now, customization seems to be attached only to the computer (browser), not the account; I have a computer that I use for work that no one else has access to, where Google searches work fine; I practically can't use the other computers to search Google.

If some day in the future, results are customized according to the account instead of simply the browser, then I won't be able to use Google at all.

> Google's an AI company

Ok, fine. Here's what they could do, then: detect topics in search results (and in query terms) and let one cluster or filter results by topics / domains.

Why don't they do that? Why don't they even try?

Re: Google is FUBAR

#244

Post by drhayes9 » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 7:58 AM UTC

smspence wrote: post #132

drhayes9 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relevant ads outed a gay teen on Facebook: http://unicornbooty.com/blog/2012/01/11/gay-teen-inadvertent... Maybe not widespread, but definitely not entirely hypothetical.

I'm not sure what this has to do with my question. What you linked to has nothing to do with either Google or email.

>What you are scared of is some hypothetical situation that there so-far is no evidence it could happen

Ecio78 outlined a scenario in which relevance targeting "outed" him in a way he didn't want. I'm analogizing Facebook relevance ads with Gmail and search ads.

I didn't think Ecio78 was saying that emails are going to pop up explictly, only that Google would present information that is relevant to him in a situation where he didn't want that relevant information.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#245

Post by bambax » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 8:16 AM UTC

lallysingh wrote: post #216

bambax wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we know something of your interests (based on G+ and/or search), isn't suggesting more relevant content to you on Youtube (as a purely hypothetical example) a good thing? No, it's not. Not because of "privacy" concerns or this whole silly "evil" debate, but because YOU'LL GUESS WRONG. I have many interests. I never email anyone about my search queries because I do searches about programming, and I exchange mail…

A query string, by itself, is just a few words in a specific order. It doesn't say very much at all. A machine has very little idea of what you're asking for. The more context it has for what you're talking about, the better chance it has at guessing what you meant -- that's all it can do, it'll never actually know. Google's often guessing wrong now -- how many times is the link you want not the top one? How often do…

> The more context it has for what you're talking about, the better chance it has at guessing what you meant -- that's all it can do, it'll never actually know.

Ask me!

> I like cats, and I watch them on youtube. When I type in jaguar, I'm actually probably asking about the cat, not the car.

"Probably" but not "certainly". So what are you to do when you actually want to search about jaguar (the car)? Then you'll have to search for "jaguar car".

But that is broken.

The paradigm of (Google) search is that it gives back, as search results, documents that contain all of the search terms (implicit AND). In the query "jaguar car" the word "car" qualifies the word "jaguar" but is not necessarily to be found in result documents.

The problem with this whole guessing game is that

1) it's UNPREDICTABLE and takes control away from the user

2) it forces the user to try to "unguess" Google ("what did it try to do, and what do I have to type to make sure it guesses right") -- an exhausting mental strain, which has a tendency to fail

> If I'm following really good programmers, and I type in a programming-related query, I'd rather get results biased toward what really good programmers like, versus the unbiased average.

How can you be sure you're already following _all_ the really good programmers that have something to say about your search? Why should I have to bother with setting up all of this "following" business?

I expect Google to give me the most relevant results of the best quality, according to some general consensus -- or, if you want to go the AI route, according to actual textual analysis (for example, and at the minimum, spelling; let me filter out results where spelling mistakes are above a certain threshold, that would have value (out goes Yahoo Answers)).

Giving more weight to results coming from people I know, or even people I've already heard of, does not help.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#246

Post by mark_integerdsv » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 8:31 AM UTC

fpgeek wrote: post #240

mark_integerdsv wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm almost certain she would use a more sensible search term. In fact: she'd most likely have the title already, having picked the brains of a friend or colleague. You seem to have missed the point of my (admittedly flimsy) example though. What I am trying to illustrate is that the alleged relevance of a set of results biased on the basis of an individual's profile is incredibly insular (and harmful) if it's there at…

> What I am trying to illustrate is that the alleged relevance of a set of results biased on the basis of an individual's profile is incredibly insular (and harmful) if it's there at all. > Boiling it down even further: I believe that search results should reflect what is on the Internet, not just that portion of it that Google deems 'relevant.' And what I'm trying to illustrate is that you're taking an overly simpli…

>And what I'm trying to illustrate is that you're taking an overly simplistic approach to the question.

I'd agree with that. In fact, I'd say that's a lot to do with my point... I believe that search results should be literal. A search for 'python', in my opinion, ought to return links to information about the animal, the language, the character from The Jungle Book, etc.

>And why isn't a user responding with more detailed guidance ("I didn't mean X [even though I often do], I mean Y right now") a reasonable exceptional flow some of the time?

This is interesting. I guess what I'd like to see is something along these lines. Turning it over in my head earlier: the thought of making two distinct types of searches did cross my mind, ie: searching from your G+ homepage returns focused results from the web at large with social results intermingling whereas searching from www.google.com returns literal results with no fiddling. The user is enabled to select which one is used by default from the search bar in their browser.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#247

Post by mark_integerdsv » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 8:36 AM UTC

rodion_89 wrote: post #231

mark_integerdsv wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...three weeks before your birthday, your girlfriend - frantically searching for a Python book to surprise you with, wades through hundreds of results pertaining to snakes, eventually gives up in exasperation and decides to head to the nearest Borders and... Oh wait. I see your point in the post above but disagree. People should control their search results based on what they are searching for, relevance is objective…

Luckily she got me an Arduino for my birthday. But you are correct in that these disambiguations are necessary to a certain extent. I think most users wouldn't react well to it being so prominent (as is with DDG). Perhaps a small sidebar would do well for this, but that would eat into their advertising real-estate.

>Luckily she got me an Arduino for my birthday.

She's a keeper!

I think we are agreed that one way or another - the coming changes are not 100% great for users across the board.

Good for Google perhaps (and that is important) but not good for all users.

Looking at the other responses to my comments and other comments on the thread in general the realisation is dawning that maybe my days of searching the web via Google are soon to be over. That is not a comment on the quality of their service or integrity or anything along those lines, it is an assessment of my position relative to their new direction.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#248

Post by bambax » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 8:40 AM UTC

mvgoogler wrote: post #210

bambax wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we know something of your interests (based on G+ and/or search), isn't suggesting more relevant content to you on Youtube (as a purely hypothetical example) a good thing? No, it's not. Not because of "privacy" concerns or this whole silly "evil" debate, but because YOU'LL GUESS WRONG. I have many interests. I never email anyone about my search queries because I do searches about programming, and I exchange mail…

"just show me the most relevant links" Here's the rub - for a given query there is no such thing as the list of link that are "most relevant". Different people will have (potentially widely) divergent opinions on what the most relevant set of links are for the exact same query . The goal Google web-search [1] is to show you the links from the whole web that are most relevant to you . Knowing more about you allows a s…

> The goal Google web-search [1] is to show you the links from the whole web that are most relevant to you.

But my point is: there is no such thing as "me". Now I do this (programming) and an hour later I do that (cooking). Then my daughter comes along and she wants to see pictures of puppies -- but I personally could not care less about puppies.

If Google thinks I'm into puppies and tries to infer something from that, then they will have broken search for me.

> Different people will have (potentially widely) divergent opinions on what the most relevant set of links are for the exact same query.

I really (really) don't think that's true.

What is true is that the "exact same query" could be about different things (domains), such as java the programming language, the island, or coffee.

But given a query and a domain, the most relevant links are obtained by consensus (PageRank). An interesting evolution would be to have PageRanks evaluated per topic.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#249

Post by mark_integerdsv » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 8:46 AM UTC

magicalist wrote: post #242

mark_integerdsv wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm almost certain she would use a more sensible search term. In fact: she'd most likely have the title already, having picked the brains of a friend or colleague. You seem to have missed the point of my (admittedly flimsy) example though. What I am trying to illustrate is that the alleged relevance of a set of results biased on the basis of an individual's profile is incredibly insular (and harmful) if it's there at…

I hope you aren't alluding to anything as ridiculous as "search neutrality". There is no such thing. There are certainly less optimal results, in several dimensions with a poorly defined fitness landscape, but that complexity is exactly why its so ridiculous to talk about any search results "reflecting what is on the Internet". You have provided no metric for that statement, so how could it even be measured? There is…

>...but that complexity is exactly why its so ridiculous to talk about any search results "reflecting what is on the Internet".

>You have provided no metric for that statement, so how could it even be measured?

That's fair. My comment is massively vague.

Maybe I could reframe that comment as a question: are you of the opinion that moving results that herd users into Google's own products and content above results that are perhaps less biased, more objective and do not serve to enrich Google directly is better for users than the way that Google search has worked up until this point?

I know that the subject of search is hugely complex and that Googles algorithms already define what is returned to the user but I am questioning what I perceive to be a change in motivation and a change in quality as result.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#250

Post by bambax » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 8:47 AM UTC

rhino42 wrote: post #201

bambax wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we know something of your interests (based on G+ and/or search), isn't suggesting more relevant content to you on Youtube (as a purely hypothetical example) a good thing? No, it's not. Not because of "privacy" concerns or this whole silly "evil" debate, but because YOU'LL GUESS WRONG. I have many interests. I never email anyone about my search queries because I do searches about programming, and I exchange mail…

No offense, but you seem to be raging a bit there. Naturally, you have many interests. We all do. Google is trying to get the best picture of what those interests are, arguably so that they can give better than chance (or whatever they had before this). As usual, I would suspect that having more information trumps having less, so I argue that SPYW is improvement. Sorry if this post seems impolite...

You're right, this upsets me a little. It upsets me because it takes control away from me and makes me work harder.

Instead of just searching (typing words that I expect to find in result documents), I'll have to try to second-guess Google and craft my query in such a way that it guesses right.