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The next Google

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Re: The next Google

#321

Post by mgkimsal »

Melatonic wrote: post #224
mostlysimilar wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a simple box where you put a question in and it gives you answers Google is very good at this, but this is exactly what I _don't_ want in the "Next Google". I want a _search engine_ for the web, not an answers engine that tries to know what I want better than I do. Search the web. Give me links to websites. This seems obvious to me, but everyone is trying to be like Google. I'm convinced the death of the web and in…

Google still searches forums pretty decently - I think what you are describing are two separate phenomena 1. Yes Google search has gone to shit - even putting stuff in quotes now does not do an exact search (there is another checkbox you ALSO need to use for that). It tries to be too smart even when no user is logged in. 2. Giant mega forums like Reddit have really taken over. Instead of a dedicated forum people just…

I'd spend more time in reddit if they had better search.

Re: The next Google

#322

Post by notriddle »

simion314 wrote: post #291
notriddle wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem with GNOME, and with Mozilla, and with almost everyone who's commenting on their choices, is that all of them are shuffling deck chairs around on the Titanic. The Titanic didn't sink because of the arrangement of deck chairs, and Mozilla didn't sink because of any features they did or didn't provide (and GNOME didn't fail to achieve significant market share in the first place because of features e…

The issue in open source is with projects with not a strong leader ship , then you get some wanna be designer copying Apple because they read some book and now he thinks that shit needs to look and feel different. Then you have developers that want to work on new cool stuff and not maintain existing code, so every few years you get a full reset but because of inexperience or incompetence the new version is buggy for…

Did you reply to the wrong comment? Because nothing you said has anything to do with any of what I wrote. It's not even a counterargument. It just reiterates the original point, which I don't entirely disagree with, but don't think has anything to do with GNOME's lack of market success.

Market success has almost nothing to do with product quality. Well, okay, it does, but only in the sense that you need to not actually be a total fraud. You can get away with dismal quality as long as your marketing is good [1]. In formal terms, software development is a loser's game [2].

[1]: https://danluu.com/nothing-works/

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26660679

This implies that the churn you're complaining about has nothing to do with market success. You might not like it, but that doesn't mean the failure of Linux on the desktop is actually caused by it.

Re: The next Google

#323

Post by throwawayboise »

The fundamental problem with search engines is that 95% of the content on the web is utter garbage.

Search engines used to seem better because they were filtering from a small pond of reasonably clear water, not an ocean of sewage.

Re: The next Google

#324

Post by mulmen »

baxtr wrote: post #225
idiotsecant wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The death of the web is because most people don't want what you want. They don't mind walled gardens, so long as they are easy to use and have the content and connections that they want to see. The audience of HN is extremely skewed towards preferring systems that allow tinkering but that's not what the market wants.

This. People don't realize that the early web was elitist. Now, the entire population is online. And, as you said, most people simply don't care about the stuff we care about. That's also why "Google's search results are soo bad." They're not. For the bulk of Google's visitors, they're good enough.

Indeed. We live in the eternal September.

But to be honest the internet is still the internet. The web still exists. Any lamentation at the loss of the "old" internet is that you don't have more angry uncles spewing political rhetoric on your motorcycle forum.

Do you want the unwashed masses in your specialist forums? I certainly don't. Seems to me things are working pretty well. I do worry about the next generation but to be honest, the same was said about me.

Instead of complaining about the state of the web just be the change. Host your site, run your forums, live your life. Stop worrying about how other people should live their lives. Take some youngsters under your wing and show them how a keyboard works instead of a touch screen.

Re: The next Google

#325

Post by makeitdouble »

legohead wrote: post #98

I just went on a mini vacation to Vegas, and was thinking how nice it would be to just call up someone and ask for some simple advice. I did a bunch of online research before I booked things, but man was it painful. There are so many copy-cat blogs who just throw together a bunch of basic information with no real research done in order to get those clicks/adwords. For example: best hotel pool in vegas. Seems simple e…

> call up someone and ask for some simple advice

> best hotel pool in vegas.

How is finding the best X at something from I assume hundreds if not thousands of choices, a simple question ? In particular, would asking any human give you the actual answer ?

At best we’d be in the same situation as looking at guide books or Michelin guide kind of rankings, created with human oversight but static in nature. More probably we’d get the most reputable hotel with no actual evaluation if it is effectively better than the myriads of others.

And that’s without digging into what you value in pool experiences vs what any evaluation system took as criteria to rank them.

I think this is an example of how we are trying very hard to simplify problems that are inherently complex. And sometimes it kinda seem to work, so people start forgetting it still is complex and rebuilding it from scratch means reapplying magic on it again.

Re: The next Google

#326

Post by [deleted] »

amelius wrote: post #294
educaysean wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your answer reminded me of the Ford quote: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." I don't mean that in a derogatory sense, I just strongly believe that in 20 years we'll look back at our Googling years and wonder how we managed to find anything at all. Who know what the next pattern of information retrieval will be, but I personally think it'll be an even bigger jump than the ju…

Faster horses could have been better for the planet than cars. https://horses.extension.org/what-is-the-carbon-footprint-of... > The digestive process of horses produces far less methane than the digestive system of cattle and sheep. (...)

[deleted]

Re: The next Google

#327

Post by bsder »

Barrin92 wrote: post #45

I think 'more customization' which is a theme with a lot of these alternatives is a fundamental dead end. I don't know where this persistent myth comes from that people love choice and tinkering, because they clearly don't. There's a huge cost associated with having to make choices, and one feature of successful modern apps is that they're frictionless. That's why TikTok is so successful. There's no login, no user ch…

> I think 'more customization' which is a theme with a lot of these alternatives is a fundamental dead end.

It doesn't need much--a single button with "Remove this site from future results".

That would solve 99% of the problem because it would destroy SEO optimization since whole swathes of people would have different criteria due to the blocked websites. It would also tell Google which websites suck if they didn't already know.

Alas, it would also destroy their ad revenue because once a site got overly scummy people would start delisting it.

Re: The next Google

#328

Post by taurusnoises »

I want to like this, but it also feels like another way we'll all be siloed in our echo chambers. I mean I guess this ship has already sailed with Google microtargeting it's search engine users through ever-increasing surveillance capitalism tavtics, but I was kind of hoping that some day search engines would be at least one way to establish commonality among us. Alas, I know this ain't happening. And, as I'm writing this, not even sure I want that.

Re: The next Google

#329

Post by georgehill »

Let's be honest here, If we remove ads, and blocked all SEO spam domains, Google results are good! I've never seen any new search engines including the new ones, even close to the quality of Google results.

In fact, I am excited about their new feature multimodal search https://blog.google/products/search/introducing-mum/

Re: The next Google

#330

Post by [deleted] »

ouid wrote: post #185
idiotsecant wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The death of the web is because most people don't want what you want. They don't mind walled gardens, so long as they are easy to use and have the content and connections that they want to see. The audience of HN is extremely skewed towards preferring systems that allow tinkering but that's not what the market wants.

What the market has produced is not ipso facto what the people want. The market is simultaneously optimizing many things. Walled gardens are much better explained by companies benefitting from not having to allow their competitors access to their customers than by "being what the people want".

[deleted]
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