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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?

#321

Post by ZeroGravitas »

IgorPartola wrote: post #201
pessimizer wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google's Search accomplishes the goals of 10 years ago, but steps no further than that. Google has removed features that it had 10 years ago.

I still don’t get why. It cannot be so difficult for them to keep things like literal search, can it? What is the incentive to remove it and replace it with a needlessly more complex almost literal but still fuzzy search? I do suspect the main thing people complain about currently with Google is the abundance of ads and the algorithm that has encouraged stupid amounts of articles of a certain length. Recipe for baked…

The last time this came up, Google demonstrated that it still worked. Most of the examples of it not working people tried to provide are actually just unexpected exact matches in the HTML that the standard user doesnt see, so they seem like false positives or "surprisingly good" results not based on the page content.

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

#323

Post by ZeroGravitas »

y42 wrote: post #289
kauguste281 wrote: post #65

Google sucks compared to Google from years ago. It's still vastly superior to the modern alternatives. It doesn't help that almost all alternatives out there are just Bing with different window dressing, so going through alternatives is just annoying as they have all the same holes in the search results. Another big issue is that everybody just tries to copy Google. I don't need Google in less good, I want to see som…

Yeah well, that's what you want, and probably a decent couple of power users. And I totally agree. But here is the thing: My mom, dad and even my brother, they don't need that. They need the limitations aka borders, the "simplicity", the synchronisation and the search results. They still stick with Facebook, Google and Amazon because it's easy to use and their gate to the Internet, where all the smart people are livi…

This is actually what I worry about more.

I'm browsing with Firefox on Mac with adblockers, and have some knowledge of what the potential scams are.

Is Google actually helping the average user more than a hypothetical alternative?

Don't know, tricky question to answer, but whatever the answer is it's likely a society wide change, involving regulation and new business models and ethical consumer choices, not just a new search engine.

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

#324

Post by JamesAdir »

I think people are forgetting that large portion of data once available for search engines in blogs and forums is now dead. This data is live only on closed Facebook groups - which you can't search even if you are on Facebook and blogs are dying slowly with Facebook and twitter, with Facebook as a closed garden and twitter is on the way to become one. I don't know why people so eager on Reddit content, since their push to more monetization, the algorithm is aimed to create more traffic and not quality discussions. You can see it on the front page with many posts are more flammatory in nature.

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

#325

Post by sidibe »

Barrin92 wrote: post #169
kauguste281 wrote: post #65

Google sucks compared to Google from years ago. It's still vastly superior to the modern alternatives. It doesn't help that almost all alternatives out there are just Bing with different window dressing, so going through alternatives is just annoying as they have all the same holes in the search results. Another big issue is that everybody just tries to copy Google. I don't need Google in less good, I want to see som…

Am I the only person on earth who hasn't noticed any decline in Google results that everyone keeps talking about? To me it seems like people conflate the fact that there is now significantly more stuff on the internet (what's the data volume today compared to 2010, 100x? 1000x?) than there was years ago with the performance of search engines. People say they now have to append "reddit" to their search and they didn't…

I've also not noticed. But this is the most common topic on HN so I probably had/have different search habits to have missed the wonderful experience of Google 10 years ago.

Google meets my expectations for a search engine but maybe I'm not expecting enough from search?

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

#326

Post by dantyti »

_yoqn wrote: post #199
lmg643 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave search is fantastic, haven't noticed a difference since moving

I'm going to second that. Since switching off Google a couple years ago I have had fewer and fewer "failed" searches which required me to go back to Google to try the search. The more people who use Brave Search (they own their own index), the better it will become. And right now I'd say it's orders of magnitude better than DDG and the others.

> orders of magnitude better than DDG and the others

used brave as my daily search engine for a couple of months and I must say this was not the case for me. Results for global EN topics were indeed better than ddg/bing in some cases (nowhere near an order of magnitude better, though), but results for any non-EN or local queries (think searching for major websites running for 15 yrs) were extremely poor in most cases.

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

#327

Post by Physkal »

black_puppydog wrote: post #73
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.)

Came here to mention kagi. Very happy user here. The no-spam results make it so much more useful as a tool. Also, "block this site from myresults forever" gives so much more agency to the user than anything Google has release in years. Googles "we know better" just reads as a big middle finger to me.

How are the porn results?

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

#328

Post by dantyti »

bko wrote: post #110
kauguste281 wrote: post #65

Google sucks compared to Google from years ago. It's still vastly superior to the modern alternatives. It doesn't help that almost all alternatives out there are just Bing with different window dressing, so going through alternatives is just annoying as they have all the same holes in the search results. Another big issue is that everybody just tries to copy Google. I don't need Google in less good, I want to see som…

> Google sucks compared to Google from years ago How much of that is based on general incompetence, SEO gaming, growing complexity of searches or manipulation (e.g. filtering "disinformation")? Or something else.

I guess another major barrier for higher quality search is the deep web (discord, fb, private forums, etc.)

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

#329

Post by vbezhenar »

IgorPartola wrote: post #201
pessimizer wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google's Search accomplishes the goals of 10 years ago, but steps no further than that. Google has removed features that it had 10 years ago.

I still don’t get why. It cannot be so difficult for them to keep things like literal search, can it? What is the incentive to remove it and replace it with a needlessly more complex almost literal but still fuzzy search? I do suspect the main thing people complain about currently with Google is the abundance of ads and the algorithm that has encouraged stupid amounts of articles of a certain length. Recipe for baked…

They didn’t remove literal search. Put your literal in quotes.

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

#330

Post by DocTomoe »

ndiddy wrote: post #165
lolinder wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a search limit for Kagi during beta? I don't see it documented anywhere, and I've been using it as my primary search engine for a few months and haven't seen any sign of a limit. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some limit to prevent abuse, but it hardly gets in the way of my normal usage.

According to a discussion I had here previously with a Kagi user, when they go out of beta they plan to offer a $10/month plan with a quota of 20 searches per day (and $0.015 per each additional search), and an unlimited plan for $20-30/month. Additionally, every time you change something related to your search query (such as clicking "Images", changing the sort order, applying filters, or blocking a website) counts…

Hm, 30 USD/month for good search is not that much - and certainly not "wealthy" territory. Remember that many people pay subscription services they use a lot less (18 USD for Netflix, anyone?).

The main paradigm shift necessary will be to pay at all for something that was "free" and is provided "free" to this day - even if the quality is worse.

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