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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

#361

Post by nine_k »

pmoriarty wrote: post #338
the_snooze wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just search. It's so much user-facing interactivity online. Stop black-box-inserting irrelevant search results. Stop black-box-modifying what I type in the document. Stop black-box-suggesting-as-I-type. Stop black-box-second-guessing what I meant. I'm a perfectly capable human who can communicate my intent, and make corrections on my own if needed. What kind of deranged hubris must these engineers have to bu…

Also, I wish Google could simply deliver the information I want without tracking me or gathering information about me, my interests, communication, travel, searches, or contacts. Google should respect their users' privacy.

Please remember, you, who does a Google search, is a user, but not a customer.

Customers' interests come first, and the customers pay well for tracking and targeting.

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

#362

Post by karaterobot »

marvinblum wrote: post #51

I feel like Google could filter out a lot of SEO spam by simply ignoring or downranking heavy sites. Everything that loads more than "n MB" is probably bloated and made to trick you into buying something or generating traffic without providing value. Another method could be to analyze how many external requests a page makes and put that into the calculation. Of course, there are exceptions, but I think this might hel…

People literally curate lists of websites that are only spam, and provide no value in search results[1]. Even if Google only cared a little bit about blocking the worst 1% of websites they don't already block, they would simply copy these lists, or use them as a starting point. Let alone devoting actual resources of their own. But they don't even do that.

[1] e.g. https://iorate.github.io/ublacklist/subscriptions

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

#363

Post by [deleted] »

WalterBright wrote: post #344
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.…

> the word you want I was watching a new movie yesterday (The Lost City) with closed captioning on. The character said "synonym". The cc text said "cinnamon". I see a lot of homonyms in the cc, but that one was the funniest.

[deleted]

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

#364

Post by freediver »

endisneigh wrote: post #129
jjulius wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

There’s no way to test without giving your info away and taking a long survey from what I remember. It’s kind of like posting Facebook links I suppose.

Our goal at this stage (invite only beta) was not to get users who just want to try it out, but who actualy wanted to contribute by reporting bugs and suggestions as beta-testers. This is why we have a survey form, as completing it signals wilingness to invest time in the product. Soon (in two weeks) we will move to public beta.

Even then we won't have search without an account, among other things because bots would probably kill us.

(kagi founder here)

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

#365

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

tome wrote: post #349
more_corn wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t DuckDuckGo use bing for the search backend?

Apparently it uses Bing plus some secret sauce although in my experience the results are a bit worse than pure Bing. Having said that I have not performed a rigorous study, this is just my guess from using all these search engines over a prolonged period.

It was mostly Bing and Yandex. The latter was responsible for the odd Russian language results you'd get at times but presumably produced English results as well.

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

#366

Post by freediver »

benstrumental wrote: post #239
metabagel wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just realized that Kagi has a !hn option which will search hacker news.

Where did you find this feature? As a beta user, I have a hard time finding documentation for the features in Kagi. Ironically, searching about Kagi in Kagi is not helpful.

Our documentation still sucks, but Kagi supports all bangs that DDG supports and you can find them here :

https://duckduckgo.com/bang

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

#367

Post by sokoloff »

WalterBright wrote: post #344
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.…

> the word you want I was watching a new movie yesterday (The Lost City) with closed captioning on. The character said "synonym". The cc text said "cinnamon". I see a lot of homonyms in the cc, but that one was the funniest.

In a presentation yesterday, I noticed “Jews” appear in the live closed caption stream of my talk.

It threw me off for a few seconds and I went back to the recording to figure out it took the word “choose” completely out of grammatical context to form a new clause of just “Jews”, as if I’d been speaking in complete sentences, then suddenly just decided to interject a random word between two half-sentences.

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

#368

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

khaledh wrote: post #204
deelly wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You right, but Google at least can try to fix it. For example: allow users to hide sites from search results, allow users to downrank sites in search results, etc. etc.

Then it's going to be gamed, again. This time by businesses who would love to drown their competitors search results, or malicious players who want to attack an entity's web presence.

They just need a hidden karma system that ignores the contributions from bad actors.

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

#370

Post by nonameiguess »

At least some of the problem here needs to be laid at the feet of users relying too heavily on the web to learn everything. Your vehicle's owner manual has instructions for how to change a tire, with the bonus that it will even know where the tools that come with your car are located and whether you have some extra features like locking lug nuts.
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