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If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

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Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#261

Post by derefr »

rootusrootus wrote: post #228
Nextgrid wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users? Imagine that every Internet user pays just one dollar a month. That's still billions worth of revenue, and it can be segmented further such as basic features available for free and more advanced users (such as large-scale API access) can pay more.

Sadly, that's not realistic. You can get a subset of users to pay, but it's vanishingly small compared to everyone who thinks they are perfectly happy with the "free" status quo. Even a dollar a month, it is infinitely more than zero. I just had this conversation with members of my extended family and almost all of them were of the "I don't care if I'm tracked, I've got nothing interesting to hide" mindset, along wit…

How about a company that provides a search engine, but as a part of a greater subscription service whose selling point isn't search? Imagine, for example, that paying for Apple One got you access to an Apple-operated search engine.

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#262

Post by moistly »

ornornor wrote: post #249
moistly wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They serve ads regardless how you get to the site you’re viewing.

They serve more ads if they steer you towards the low value SEO website filled with Adsense.

That is precisely my original point.

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#263

Post by pyro123 »

Guest19023892 wrote: post #246

I'll toss out a crazy idea to compete with Google. 1. You buy StackOverflow for $2 billion and Reddit for $10 billion. 2. You block Google from indexing the sites. 3. You start a new search engine that only searches StackOverflow and Reddit. 4. As the new search engine gains traction, you invite other high quality sites to join your vision and search engine. One requirement is they must block Google. You can guarante…

Couldn't that backfire though. Most people imo would find it it infuriating to jump between search engines at first leading to plenty new alternatives taking over ultimately leading to the demise of the above mentioned sites.

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#264

Post by juanci_to »

huynhhacnguyen wrote: post #212
zargon wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Google is an actively hostile experience. Try it without adblock and get a taste of how most people get treated by Google. And for the search results, Kagi is already better for 90% of my queries. It's much more difficult now to build a competitive search engine, but saying it's impossible and discussions should be banned is toxic. (And already basically proven wrong with existing competing search engines.)

Do I have to wait for their invitation to join the beta list before I can try Kagi? The comments here are promising and I tried to take a look for myself but apparently only beta users are allowed in at the moment.

You have to ask for it by submitting a form in their webpage and they send you an invitation to your mail

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#265

Post by Sirened »

derefr wrote: post #258
Guest19023892 wrote: post #246

I'll toss out a crazy idea to compete with Google. 1. You buy StackOverflow for $2 billion and Reddit for $10 billion. 2. You block Google from indexing the sites. 3. You start a new search engine that only searches StackOverflow and Reddit. 4. As the new search engine gains traction, you invite other high quality sites to join your vision and search engine. One requirement is they must block Google. You can guarante…

If a site allows crawling by at least one public-Internet spider, is there any legal protection it has against other crawlers who choose to ignore robots.txt and crawl anyway? Because I feel like that's exactly what Google would do here, as long as it wasn't literally illegal for them to do so.

It's kinda unclear at the moment, but it's working its way through the courts! See HiQ Labs v. LinkedIn [1] in which HiQ was scraping public profiles and was blocked from doing so by LinkedIn. This made its way to court and the 9th circuit ruled they were allowed to scrape but SCOTUS later rejected the decision and sent it back. So—murky!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#266

Post by bricemo »

space_rock wrote: post #145
fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #22

Honestly I think people are completely underestimating the difficulty of a good search engine. Google was better ten years ago because search was an easier problem to solve back then. End of story. Nobody is coming along with a better search engine. There is too much spam, content gaming, and money to be made by hacking search. These posts should almost be blocked from hacker news. ITs a fantasy. Its like saying that…

Sorry but duckduckgo or probably any other search is better than Google at this moment

Some side by side comparisons just now:

"pizza near me" - Google suggested a well rated place within 5 miles. DuckDuckGo suggested a pizza place 91 miles away??

"busted kids lip" - Google says gauze and a cold pack. DuckDuckGo says salt water??

"best monitor for mac" - Google says Dell Ultrasharp with 4.5 stars and 738 ratings on amazon. DuckDuckGo says BenQ 4 stars with 174 ratings on amazon?

how is this better?

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#267

Post by tluyben2 »

xeromal wrote: post #256
tluyben2 wrote: post #254

Google is still the fastest way to find things. The rest, including ddg just is not as good.

My phone randomly searches on bing from time to time and it blows my mind how shitty the search is. Fault Google, but it either knows what my brain wants, or my brain expects what Google provides.

I had to use Bing in China ; the things are search for are not censored, but it works as well as Altavista does begin 2000; 10 pages of spam and then maybe stack overflow. I downloaded actual manuals like in the 80s to cope. I created [0] just to be able to find things faster locally when in China (last time was December 2019 though).

It is shocking how competitors are that bad really.

[0] https://git2pdf.com/

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#268

Post by beebeepka »

ornornor wrote: post #244
mrjin wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Googles priorities have been long shifted from products to money. They are now deliberately doing evil things for more money. It is like taking small dose of drugs for fun, for sure it won't kill you immediately but it eventually will as people can hardly resist the temptation. Google has been came such a monster, even we know it's dying, but its momentum will keep it going for a very long time. And if it can correct…

> It is like taking small dose of drugs for fun, for sure it won't kill you immediately but it eventually will as people can hardly resist the temptation. Very debatable.

No fun allowed. Or the implication is taking drugs for anything but recreation won't kill you. I need more guidance!

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#269

Post by seanmcdirmid »

tluyben2 wrote: post #267
xeromal wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My phone randomly searches on bing from time to time and it blows my mind how shitty the search is. Fault Google, but it either knows what my brain wants, or my brain expects what Google provides.

I had to use Bing in China ; the things are search for are not censored, but it works as well as Altavista does begin 2000; 10 pages of spam and then maybe stack overflow. I downloaded actual manuals like in the 80s to cope. I created [0] just to be able to find things faster locally when in China (last time was December 2019 though). It is shocking how competitors are that bad really. [0] https://git2pdf.com/

I used bing while in China as well, it worked ok for what I needed. Much better than baidu where every image search for any innocuous term tended to bring up a bunch of porn.

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#270

Post by javchz »

not2b wrote: post #147

The author missed the most important reason that Google search results often suck: tens of thousands of people are working very hard to make it suck. They call themselves "SEO specialists", and their job is to get their shitty site to the top of the rankings. It's an ongoing battle. Sure, Google wants to make money, but to do that they need to protect their search moneymaker and keep it dominant, so their incentive i…

I miss the days when SEO was only focusing on a decent HTML semantics, meta tags in order, organic backlinking, a good title that aligned with the content, and a good enough performance.

Right now SEO it's an arms race between google and every SEO agencies, with a keyword being attached to some company that may have 0 relevance to the user.

Doesn't help, that depending on the query, the first results are ads only superficially related. You can search for the name of a popular brand of a car/hotel/insurance, and the first results are the competitors. If you don't want to be below the fold, you need to pay, even if your website it's exactly what the user it's looking for.

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