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Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine

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Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine

#41

Post by DylanBohlender »

bwb wrote: post #30
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of those "Google is the new AOL" moments hit me when I heard a commercial for Google on the radio recently. Specifically, it was someone explaining that they had a feature built especially for veterans to find jobs relevant to them, and that you could get to it by typing "jobs for veterans" into Google search. It just sounded so much like the old AOL Keyword feature, which a lot of people forgot about, but was li…

I do not understand how you guys can call Google the new AOL, Google search works like a charm at a huge scale. What is the problem?

I think the crux of the others’ point is that Google’s increasingly complex secret sauce for returning search results, combined with its general ubiquity, has perhaps created a monoculture whereby we view the Web almost entirely through Google’s lens. AOL’s “curation” of the web via its portal was a bit more direct for sure, but I can see how the effect could be similar.

Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine

#42

Post by folkrav »

d35007 wrote: post #35
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

warez

Yeah but is it pronounced like "wares" or like "Juarez"?

"Warez" is from "software", so it's meant to be pronounced "wares" https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/warez

Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine

#43

Post by afandian »

itp wrote: post #33
afandian wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm nostagic for precise search, but I wonder how it would have fared with the scale we have now. (Edit: scale and diversity of input data but also audiences) Google regularly fails to include all words I searched (even if it's only three or four), often retrieving completely useless results. I doubt it's due to incompetence; I take it as a signal that they're now struggling to match the volume and characteristics of…

I suspect it's a reflection of the way the majority of their audience interacts with search. For a large number of people, Google's ability to answer the underlying question, rather than explicitly identify pages where all search terms appear, means it works better. If you think of Google as a way to get answers, this is good. If you think of Google as a search engine, and particularly if you have historical experien…

I totally take your point, but I don't think it's inconsistent with mine.

Search engines being 'about' a concept isn't a new thing. Bewlew's book from 2008 is called "Finding Out About". The dream is that the search engine can work out what a document is about, and what I'm thinking about based on the content of the document / query, and match them up.

The new thing in your example is that Google has gone beyond documents into burrito restauraunts, but it's not such a huge leap.

Maybe new adavances have brought new algorithms that are somehow better at finding and modelling those abstractions so the search engine is no longer a recognisable vector space model with predictable proxies. Even if that _is_ the case, they should be able to answer a query I have made, on my own terms.

Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine

#45

Post by wil421 »

bwb wrote: post #30
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of those "Google is the new AOL" moments hit me when I heard a commercial for Google on the radio recently. Specifically, it was someone explaining that they had a feature built especially for veterans to find jobs relevant to them, and that you could get to it by typing "jobs for veterans" into Google search. It just sounded so much like the old AOL Keyword feature, which a lot of people forgot about, but was li…

I do not understand how you guys can call Google the new AOL, Google search works like a charm at a huge scale. What is the problem?

It’s not comparing technical merit or business decisions. AOL for a long time was the window into the web for lots of American users. Google is now a window into the web for users around the world.

Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine

#46

Post by hellofunk »

spudlyo wrote: post #18

What I miss most about Altavista was the boolean search operators, and being able to reliably insist that words either must or must not appear in the results with the + and - characters. With Google these operators are seemingly just hints that it feels free to ignore. +noir +film -"pinot noir"

They used to behave in Google as you describe and it was quite reliable. But somewhere along the line, Google changed how it handles search expressions (for the worse, in my opinion).

Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine

#47

Post by afandian »

luckylion wrote: post #39
afandian wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm nostagic for precise search, but I wonder how it would have fared with the scale we have now. (Edit: scale and diversity of input data but also audiences) Google regularly fails to include all words I searched (even if it's only three or four), often retrieving completely useless results. I doubt it's due to incompetence; I take it as a signal that they're now struggling to match the volume and characteristics of…

Interesting idea. I figured it was due to the user base of 2019 being very different than that of 2010, and Google adapting to the fact that most of their users aren't technology literate and cannot formulate clear search queries, so they just try to guess what might be of interest to them.

Absolutely. Scale and diversity applies not only to ingested documents but users. I'm under no illusions that Google has said "here are a chunk of users who may want precise search, at a cost of X, but this other demographic can bring us revenue Y".

That's fine, it's their business, but it makes the virtual monopoly even more painful.

Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine

#48

Post by koube »

afandian wrote: post #27
spudlyo wrote: post #18

What I miss most about Altavista was the boolean search operators, and being able to reliably insist that words either must or must not appear in the results with the + and - characters. With Google these operators are seemingly just hints that it feels free to ignore. +noir +film -"pinot noir"

I'm nostagic for precise search, but I wonder how it would have fared with the scale we have now. (Edit: scale and diversity of input data but also audiences) Google regularly fails to include all words I searched (even if it's only three or four), often retrieving completely useless results. I doubt it's due to incompetence; I take it as a signal that they're now struggling to match the volume and characteristics of…

does it work well if you put the individual words in quotes? It seems to rank popularity above exact match, and a word in quotes forces it to be present.

Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine

#49

Post by diegocg »

spudlyo wrote: post #18

What I miss most about Altavista was the boolean search operators, and being able to reliably insist that words either must or must not appear in the results with the + and - characters. With Google these operators are seemingly just hints that it feels free to ignore. +noir +film -"pinot noir"

Have you tried searching with verbatim mode? Also, keep in mind that google removed the + operator, but you can achieve the same results using double quotation.

Re: Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine

#50

Post by pureliquidhw »

d35007 wrote: post #35
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

warez

Yeah but is it pronounced like "wares" or like "Juarez"?

I know it's wares with a z, but I've always pronounced it "Juarez" in my head. Never gave it a thought until now!
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