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Google backtracks on search results design

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Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#291

Post by Klonoar »

toyg wrote: post #110
Klonoar wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect you greatly underestimate how much the average person didn't really care here. In the moment, yeah, this matters - but Google still beats DDG for certain classes of results and people go where the easiest experience is. I say this as a user of DDG. ;P

People don’t really compare that hard. If DDG’s experience is intuitively easier than Google’s in the first minutes (because there are no ads and results are good enough), people will switch. The real problem is the “embedness” level of Google is much higher than any search engine achieved before: a switcher must make a pretty serious effort to change browser settings, change tools etc, and you can bet top dollars th…

There's a difference in our indifference, you know.

"People don't really compare that hard" has been demonstrated to be false - if people didn't care that much, Bing & co would've seen much greater success in the past few years. It's not like this hasn't been tried before.

Google is so damn good at search that being "good enough" isn't good enough for the average user. You have to be as good as Google. This is why Apple and Mozilla work with Google to offer them as a default - they're not dumb, they know people expect it.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#292

Post by Klonoar »

pb7 wrote: post #265
mattmanser wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't remember correctly, this is a persistent falsehood I see repeated in all these sort of threads. https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/du...

https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so... “ In fact, DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from a variety of pa…

Thanks for digging that up. :)

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#293

Post by pieterk »

OrgNet wrote: post #270
pieterk wrote: post #17

When will we realize that adwords and everything it inspired was a wrong turn for the internet? I’d much rather pay a monthly fee to get the services I want. I understand that Google and Facebook have gone too far down this path, and they will say such a service is not as profitable, but ultimately their business model seems unsustainable. People search for the truth, and while you can sell anybody anything, the trut…

> I’d much rather pay a monthly fee to get the services I want. How is that possible if you never visit the same sites? That idea appears to favor the big players.

Great point!

I think ISPs are fine services, they can host and serve websites like they’ve always done. I pay for my service, you pay for yours, we can connect, it balances out.

If you decide to do something that adds value for the both of us, I can chip in to help you cover your costs.

One thing very valuable to me is a search engine. You promise to index all sites you can find on the internet, but you need funds to buy disks and servers. I think you’d do a great job, and I’ll pay you a monthly fee to keep giving me access to your wealth of information.

It so works out that the more people you can serve, the more income you’ll have to become a bigger player. Nothing wrong with that, just as there used to be nothing wrong with Google’s search.

It’s when they asked not the searchers but the advertisers to pay them that things went awry.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#294

Post by pieterk »

pieterk wrote: post #293
OrgNet wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’d much rather pay a monthly fee to get the services I want. How is that possible if you never visit the same sites? That idea appears to favor the big players.

Great point! I think ISPs are fine services, they can host and serve websites like they’ve always done. I pay for my service, you pay for yours, we can connect, it balances out. If you decide to do something that adds value for the both of us, I can chip in to help you cover your costs. One thing very valuable to me is a search engine. You promise to index all sites you can find on the internet, but you need funds to…

Another great service would be one to advertise my products on or disseminate ideas with. To like minded, or just interested people. I’d pay you a monthly service and will keep up my inventory. Customers would build up a profile of things they are interested in being subjected to.

You could help them get to know themselves better, or find what they like by asking for information that they’re comfortable divulging.

Just please don’t combine those two products in one, for the love of god!

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#295

Post by uoylj »

karinakarina wrote: post #282
uoylj wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

startpage was purchased by an ad company last year.

Is that your main concern about Startpage? As a Startpage person, maybe I can shed some light on this. Last year, Startpage announced an investment in Startpage by System1 through Privacy One Group, a wholly-owned subsidiary of System1. With this investment, the plan is to further expand privacy features & reach new users. The Startpage founders have control over the privacy components of Startpage. More info - https…

Hmm yes, that sounds very comforting.. I just have one question though, do you actually believe we are complete morons who will buy this garbage?

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#296

Post by drivebycomment »

bit_logic wrote: post #51

It's too late, lasting damage has been done. This redesign made me seriously look at DDG and I'm impressed with what I found.

That's weird since DDG is noticeable worse in this particular aspect. DDG ads icon has much thinner fonts and is placed on the far right, instead of left. Combined, it is more difficult, not less, on DDG to tell ads from organic results quickly. There are many good reasons to switch to DDG but this latest episode is not it.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#297

Post by modzu »

to all the duckduckgo comments: ddg also has ads that look like search results. ublock origin nukes ~5 elements for me on a google search and ~ 8 on DDG. as far as i can see the only real differentiator for ddg is that it returns "universal" search results instead of individualized results (based on location, history, etc). aka, results that are 'private' but also more likely to be less relevant. more than ever the internet is ready for a new search engine, but DDG aint it. we need one that isnt based on f'ing advertising: its antithetical to the point of search!!!

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#298

Post by joegahona »

thih9 wrote: post #127
product50 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing like this is going to happen. Google Search is leaps and bounds ahead beyond anything else. And Google Assistant on top of this makes it even more effective. This was a mistake by Google and they heard the feedback and corrected it. MySpace analogy doesn't make sense since there is no Facebook, which was a competent social network, here. Search is a massive investment and you don't just have random companies…

> Google Search is leaps and bounds ahead beyond anything else. Nothing is too big to fail. If there's no direct competitor, an indirect one or a group could take over too. > Duckduckgo itself uses Bing Search as its backend. This reads to me as if Bing was the only backend they use, which isn't the case. According to Wikipedia they use multiple backends: "DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of "over 400" sources,…

I keep seeing HN users working themselves into a lather praising DDG, but I just went there and see almost identical obfuscation of ads (a tiny "Ad" in the same color as the link) and in the using of favicons for each of their organic results.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#299

Post by sgc »

karinakarina wrote: post #282
uoylj wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

startpage was purchased by an ad company last year.

Is that your main concern about Startpage? As a Startpage person, maybe I can shed some light on this. Last year, Startpage announced an investment in Startpage by System1 through Privacy One Group, a wholly-owned subsidiary of System1. With this investment, the plan is to further expand privacy features & reach new users. The Startpage founders have control over the privacy components of Startpage. More info - https…

I wish that page was a little clearer as to how startpage still has control, since it turns out system1 now has a majority stake in startpage. However, in reading the letter from your CEO linked at the top, it appears this is by covenant. While in theory that could be renegotiated in the future, it is a relatively strong protection. It would be nice to see the exact language of said covenant and whether there are protections requiring public notification if it is ever changed or rescinded. I know that is probably not going to happen, but it's worth communicating what I think would be a common desire.

Re: Google backtracks on search results design

#300

Post by lopmotr »

userbinator wrote: post #4

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22107823 Does this mean they'll also "backtrack" on their destruction of the URL? I was extremely disturbed and horrified when I realised that not only did they replace / with >, but also seemed to arbitrarily remove and rewrite pieces of URLs shown in the results (e.g. all articles from HM would show nothing more than "news.ycombinator.com > item", which was…

If URLs are read by humans, they need to be human readable. If you use a prominently displayed name to contain crap like "?id=22107823" which is meaningless to most users, then get off a search engine. Nobody needs to see that. Give it a human readable name if you want humans to read it or hide it completely if you don't. It's amazing how long unreadable URLs have lingered. I'm all for them being as hidden as HTML code.

Even if you have a lot of pages, you can still make a readable URL, like The New York Times "https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/22/style/modern-love-podcast.... None of that except perhaps "https://" and ".html" are mysterious computer codes.

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