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Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

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Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#351

Post by freediver »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #169
baxuz wrote: post #77

It's not a Google problem, it's a web problem. Everything is based around SEO spam. If someone has a website, and they're producing content, their point is to monetize the browsing of the website itself, or promote their main product via the website. This incentivizes a certain kind of content, which is marketing content. These days I'm back to searching social networks like Reddit or Hacker News for (at least somewh…

The other side of the coin is that users are so used to the "free" model (read: ad model) that they refuse to pay for anything directly. Look at youtube. They show ads and there is a non-stop stream of complaints about how long/bad/annoying they are. They offer a paid subscription to remove all ads and people laugh at the audacity youtube has to ask for money. Users DO NOT want to see/watch ads. Users DO NOT want to…

Actually, things are quite the opposite. 50 million people pay for YouTube Premium. 50 million people do want to pay for ad-free content.

That is only 1% of all Google users maybe, but it is the seed we need.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/2/22654318/youtube-50-millio...

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#352

Post by mikevin »

baxuz wrote: post #77

It's not a Google problem, it's a web problem. Everything is based around SEO spam. If someone has a website, and they're producing content, their point is to monetize the browsing of the website itself, or promote their main product via the website. This incentivizes a certain kind of content, which is marketing content. These days I'm back to searching social networks like Reddit or Hacker News for (at least somewh…

I don't know if I can agree, yes SEO spam is probably worse but it's grown side-by-side with Google, both sides have more money and resources.

SEO spammers decided to improve their tools/techniques. Google realized they could earn just as much by replacing their grep-for-the-web search-engine with some NLP, ML and fuzzy matching on what I strongly suspect to be a tiny subset of the index they had before.

I understand the reasoning and I admit it does a really good job at correcting mistakes but I often wonder if anyone working on the search-engine actually uses it to find development related information.

Maybe I'm in some kind of A-B testing hell but my results often show 1 relevant random url and a tiny a stackoverflow box with other relevant information and then always the same 10-20 stackoverflow/github copycats. Scrolling down just loops those same sites over and over again. Similarly I've never had Google link to the official python docs, it's always some spammy website that copy pasted a docstring and decorated it with ads/share buttons.

I don't understand how that's not bothering people that actually work on the search-engine.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#353

Post by freediver »

corrral wrote: post #343
rg111 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not a Google problem Oh it is definitelt a Google problem. I was in mood yesterday and I tried Google versus Kagi and You Code. Results of N out of N queries in other search engines were miles better in other search engines than Google. I have now switched completely to code.you.com and Kagi from Google. They are ready.

Kinda OT, but goddamn is it ballsy of Kagi to make their logo a G.

Come on'! Google owns pretty much everything on the web, we can't let them own the letter g too ;)

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#354

Post by dirtybird04 »

colordrops wrote: post #257
l33t2328 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Frankly, if it’s not reliable as a tool, it has no real value This is exactly the ridiculous kind of hyperbole I come to HN for. If you honestly can’t find any value in using Google despite its unreliability, you were probably expecting too much of it to begin with.

Your expectations are too low. We all remember google in it's heyday when it returned honest results, so we know what's possible.

That was when silicon valley was still run by computer nerds. Those days aren't coming back buddy, time to move on

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#355

Post by ydant »

stevelosh wrote: post #327
superasn wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes i too would like to see a side by side comparison why it's better than just dude trust me..

I've been using it during the beta and plan on paying for it once they start charging. Previously I had tried switching to DuckDuckGo, but found myself using !g half the time because I knew the DDG results would be garbage compared to the Google results. I haven't found Kagi's results to be significantly better than Google's results, but unlike DDG they're not hugely worse than Google. It's all the extra stuff that m…

Basically everything you wrote above is what I'd say - except I haven't submitted a bug report or feedback to Kagi...

Basically, when I used DDG, I found myself frequently using !g to search Google instead. For Kagi, I haven't really found myself doing that anywhere near as often.

So yeah, you have to fill out a survey (took a couple of minutes and I got an invite the same/next day), so it's not the easiest to recommend right now. Two weeks and they go free+premium according to an email today.

I think it's just that I, like a lot of HN, have been getting super disillusioned with Google lately - and most importantly the preponderance of obviously machine-generated zero-value spam pages for everything I search for - so I was desperately trying to find something better. DDG constantly disappointed for my searching. Kagi doesn't do that. So I'm happy. $10/month happy? I'm not sure.

Generally, there's a growing group of people who are feeling about Google the way a lot of us felt about Facebook 10+ years ago - it's time to stop relying on it and maybe cut it out entirely (and yes, I know there are plenty of people who felt this way about Google for years already). So I pay for Fastmail now. I guess I'll likely be paying for Kagi now. Quality is getting expensive, but at least I'm paying with my money rather than my data.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#356

Post by dostojevski1 »

guerrilla wrote: post #316

How come nobody is doing social search yet? Why can't I up and down vote results and maybe even comment on them or something? I don't want to ever see some of these recipe sites that show up again... I can't imagine I would if people were helping curate. Seems like an "easy" solution to SEO crapola?

I don't think there is the need of curating content in a social search way, if the SE itself is just good and alternative SE's that are coming up seem very promising.

e.g., you.com lets you pick preferred sources, so that you can tailor your search experience to your needs.

They've also done a great job on recipes. https://you.com/search?q=oven%20roasted%20broccoli

Neeva and Kagi also seem promising, though their both waitlist/invite only still

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#357

Post by nine_k »

thunderbong wrote: post #336
DharmaPolice wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately the fuzzy search thing is in a kind of feedback loop in terms of user expectation. Because of Google users are used to typing the wrong thing and getting the right answer. If I search for "how old is Roger Redford" Google tells me that Robert Redford was born in 1936 (it doesn't even display the "Did you mean...?" correction). And to be fair, in 99% of cases the person probably did mean Robert Redford.…

Google is 24 years old. They track everything from email to searches to website behaviour across innumerable sites. If they still need a feedback loop on their search results page, maybe they should hire some other guys to tweak their search engine!

They do, partly because SEO spam never sleeps and ever evolves.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#358

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

omoikane wrote: post #325
colordrops wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your expectations are too low. We all remember google in it's heyday when it returned honest results, so we know what's possible.

I remember the days when internet as a whole were simpler in terms of contents and users, and search engines reflected that simpicity. I am not sure if it's possible to go back to those days.

A more complex web landscape doesn't explain why the entire first page of results is very often just ads and e-commerce sites.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#359

Post by tenebrisalietum »

mhmmbt wrote: post #260

Technical solutions are not going to fix a political problem. Sundar has been quoted as saying “they are a business first” and a businesses political obligation is make profit for the owners. These companies and technologies are meant to serve human beings, not a mathematical ideal in programmers heads. While: $makeMoney == $howSocietyWorks; return $getUsedToIt Ooh but politics is boring! Only 13% of adults in the US…

They sure use and depend on what that 13% develop/create/literally engineer and maintain, though.

Re: Why Google is so unbearable, and how to fix it

#360

Post by vkou »

colordrops wrote: post #257
l33t2328 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Frankly, if it’s not reliable as a tool, it has no real value This is exactly the ridiculous kind of hyperbole I come to HN for. If you honestly can’t find any value in using Google despite its unreliability, you were probably expecting too much of it to begin with.

Your expectations are too low. We all remember google in it's heyday when it returned honest results, so we know what's possible.

> we know what's possible.

We know its possible to do in the Internet of 2004.

The Internet of 2004 no longer exists, the Internet of 2022 is a very different problem for search to solve.

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