Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image • Hacker News Board

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#331

Post by yojo » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 1:57 AM UTC

CSMastermind wrote: post #19

I'm old enough to remember when a big selling point of Google was that it didn't do this.

Even when they first turned on ads, it was arguably a net win. I worked AdWords tech-support 2005-2008, and sat in on the “Ads Quality” core team meeting.

They basically had this big money dial, and rather than crank it to 11, they were fiercely protective of the core user experience.

They kept ads mostly to the side (unobtrusive), only served them on queries where there was a high probability of commercial intent, and only promoted ads above organic results if the predicted CTR was extremely high.

I remember being delighted more than once when the ad system surfaced the product I wanted when organic results did not.

Now…? You get all spam above the fold.

The Ads Quality PM back then was Nick Fox, who I just learned became SVP for ads and search last year. Which means he is at least indirectly responsible for the OP. Not entirely sure what to make of that.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#332

Post by xyzelement » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 1:57 AM UTC

If I may offer a devil's advocate perspective.

I just googled Toyota Highlander (my car) and the ad in the search results is "please consider the Honda Pilot."

Now it's unlikely that I am shopping for a midsized SUV and am not aware of the major competitors, but squinting that away for a second - if I am searching for a car I think I want and Google informs me of a perfectly viable alternative that might be cheaper or better in some other way that can have a huge positive impact on my life. So in this case I am obviously aware of Honda but an ad for one of the Korean or domestic makers I hadn't considered could be useful.

Similarly if I am Google midjourney as in the article because I heard that somewhere and Google positions for me potential cheaper/better alternatives as ads - that's not a terrible thing and you could say hits at the best usecase of an ad - making me aware of an alternative solution to a problem I have that's driving my search to begin with.

I obviously don't feel this way about the majority of ads I see but when it "hits right" it's really useful

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#333

Post by ibfreeekout » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 1:57 AM UTC

gxs wrote: post #318

kajaktum wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In hindsight, we should have known this would happen eventually. At this point, we have to be actively be against free services. Every time its just a ticking time bomb. There's literally no incentive for them to be an actual good service, just good enough that you tolerate it and not consider other options, but shit enough that they can extract value out of you.

Yeah agree 100% - this is why I’m a happy kagi customer It’s kind of cool being treated like a customer New feature releases aren’t about ad placement or SEO or personalization / tracking Instead, their product updates are targeted at me - cool nifty features that I can immediately try out Like kagi or not, just the feeling of having devs care about my actual personal experience is a breath of fresh air I know not ev…

I recently signed up for an annual subscription to Kagi on their Starter plan and I couldn't agree more. Search quality with them has been great so far, and I realize their small web search and exploration features too.

I've been slowly working to find other paid services as alternatives to the free ones that I'm currently using (next big one was shifting away from Gmail and onto a personal domain for mail using Fastmail). Migrated away from Notion and using Obsidian with Syncthing running on my unRAID server at home. Generally just trying to find alternatives that aren't in the data mining and user lock in sphere and more about maintaining a positive user experience without taking advantage of their users and their data.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#334

Post by jeff_carr » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 1:58 AM UTC

verdverm wrote: post #293

johnfn wrote: post #249

Can anyone reproduce this? When I search "Midjourney", I get an ad for Midjourney (from Midjourney), followed by Midjourney, the site. After that, I get the Midjourney Discord, the Midjourney subreddit, the Midjourney Wikipedia page, and then (inexplicably), another Midjourney ad. That seems about as good as it could be. Edit: I guess I should say that I do agree that the quality of Google Search is pretty poor these…

Seriously, all I get is Midjourney links and links to midjourney official accounts on a number of other platforms Going incognito, the first link is a sponsored ad for... midjourney

[flagged]

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#335

Post by bombcar » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 1:58 AM UTC

condiment wrote: post #287

jpmattia wrote: post #210

Like many of you, I serve as IT support for family. Some of those family are beginning to slip cognitively, so I'd like to say: Fk google for doing this. You are confusing my relatives who cannot tell the difference between your ad-spam and actual links, and it is not an exaggeration to say that you are now taking advantage of old people. I'm trying to install adblockers (uBlock) and move them over to chatgpt when po…

I pay for Kagi for search, my family uses Kagi. I pay for NextDNS to block ads, all of my family's devices use NextDNS. I pay for credits on OpenRouter and host an OpenWebUI instance, all of my family's AI is private. I pay for the news - The Economist, the WSJ, FT, NewScientist, etc. Lies are free, the truth is behind a paywall. The only thing money can't buy, yet, is a phone network free of robocalls.

I gotchu fam: https://tincan.kids/

It’s a phone, it’s a network, it has no robocalls!

I know, I know.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#336

Post by bombcar » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:00 AM UTC

yojo wrote: post #331

CSMastermind wrote: post #19

I'm old enough to remember when a big selling point of Google was that it didn't do this.

Even when they first turned on ads, it was arguably a net win. I worked AdWords tech-support 2005-2008, and sat in on the “Ads Quality” core team meeting. They basically had this big money dial, and rather than crank it to 11, they were fiercely protective of the core user experience. They kept ads mostly to the side (unobtrusive), only served them on queries where there was a high probability of commercial intent, a…

Wasn’t that the era where all the big money ads were for strange diseases?

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#337

Post by mikepo » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:00 AM UTC

We can have the plain old good Google search results page back on by default. It works by making the "Web" tab the default. Tested on Firefox and it works great. No extension needed. Instructions in the topmost comment of this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1ctk95k/comment/l4...

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#338

Post by extraduder_ire » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:02 AM UTC

d4mi3n wrote: post #66

chairmansteve wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"How will you fight the inevitable slide that happens if you ever got on top?". Don't get too greedy. There must be examples... 37Signals?

"Don't get greedy" and similar variations assumes intent rather than what I see as the reality of how companies operate within the US--not a failing of individual virtues. If you're a public company, your shareholders will want stock prices to go up and are more than happy to use their shares to vote for whoever is willing to make that happen. This is, of course, an exaggeration. Not all shareholders value profits ab…

Is there a minimum percentage of voting stock you have to issue in US law? IIRC, google is split in half into voting and non-voting shares with a clause in their incorporation to buy back shares to keep their prices roughly equal.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#339

Post by bombcar » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:02 AM UTC

MarsIronPI wrote: post #174

pitched wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of stressing, you could move on to supporting the next cool kids.

With what kind of assurance that history won't repeat itself? If anything, the rate at which companies enshittify has increased. Instead of taking 10 years now it takes more like 3 (or less).

Maybe there’s something else to support instead of enshittifying companies.

Google should be fearful for how easy it was to replace them entirely with Kagi, and how little I miss it.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#340

Post by Cyclone_ » Thu, Sep 25, 2025, 2:02 AM UTC

I liked the search results a lot better when the ads were on the side. You could see a competitor if that was of interest to you, but you didn't have to scroll when you wanted to just find what would likely be a top result.