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If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

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Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#441

Post by aabbcc1241 »

soniman wrote: post #348
richardsocher wrote: post #55

They don't know yet about you.com? - No spam, no ads, you control the ranker with your source preferences, hardcore private mode that doesn't save anything nor uses your location (even DDG saves your queries and gives location-based results), many developer apps that include what you want - eg code snippets in a StackOverflow app, AI apps like you.com/write that would write essays for you, etc. Also, many folks (outs…

I like you.com but would like the option to search using google if my search on you.com fails. You.com will default to google if there are literally no results, but it disrupts my flow to paste the search terms into google if I don't like the you.com results.

If you're on desktop, you can use userscript to integrate Google search into you.com

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#442

Post by thesunkid »

soniman wrote: post #348
richardsocher wrote: post #55

They don't know yet about you.com? - No spam, no ads, you control the ranker with your source preferences, hardcore private mode that doesn't save anything nor uses your location (even DDG saves your queries and gives location-based results), many developer apps that include what you want - eg code snippets in a StackOverflow app, AI apps like you.com/write that would write essays for you, etc. Also, many folks (outs…

I like you.com but would like the option to search using google if my search on you.com fails. You.com will default to google if there are literally no results, but it disrupts my flow to paste the search terms into google if I don't like the you.com results.

there is a simple solution for that. Search for '!g {your_query}' in you.com and boom, you'll be taken to google.

They introduced that feature here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScDcj-hX5ns

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#443

Post by ornornor »

mrjin wrote: post #433
ornornor wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking drugs for fun won’t necessarily make you an addict or kill you.

Hmmm, only if you know when to stop and can actually stop, sure, no it won't kill you. But what if you cannot stop? Most importantly, I did not even mention which drug as those was never the point.

> I did not even mention which drug

Exactly. Heroin is pretty addictive, pretty fast.

Otoh, there is no lethal dose that we know of for magic mushrooms (psylocibin). You can take a lot and have a hell of a trip but no one ever died from a psylocibin overdose. And it’s not addictive in the sense that you’ll get physical effects of you stop taking it. It builds a tolerance that will make it have much less effect if you take too much too often so it kinda takes care of the problem this way.

Alcohol which is freely available to any adult can make you addicted and will Jill you if you take too much of it.

What about sugar? We’re pretty much all addicted to it, and it can kill in the long term (obesity, diabetes…)

I’m not a drug expert but I think it’s very detrimental to say that all drugs are bad, they’ll make you an addict and kill you, and they’ll liquefy your brain. This is FUD and it results in shaming. It also creates abysmally poor public policy like the “war on drugs” which has been nothing but a colossal failure and a misery generating system.

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#444

Post by OscarCunningham »

optimalsolver wrote: post #380
OscarCunningham wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why is it that I can never find my old reddit comments if I want to refer back to them?

Try this and search by your username: https://camas.github.io/reddit-search/

Thank you! For some reason other reddit searching apps don't seem to work for me, but that one does.

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#445

Post by jbn_norse »

mrkramer wrote: post #404
jbn_norse wrote: post #368

What people, entrepreneurial subculture, and professionals don’t understand is that Google is in the business of delivering a crappy product because of how it relates to advertising psychology. It’s that simple. An example can be observed in SEO which doubles as a product framework in the context of performing a job for Google by altering content in the hopes of producing behavioral modification. This is almost alway…

Google's algorithms are blackbox; nobody knows how they work so webmasters are trying to game the Google one way or another, vicious cycle that never ends. I agree with you nobody actually knows wtf they are doing because information asymmetry and information overload in the 21st century are brutal. Mass communication freed us but at the same time it is easy to get caught in never ending echo chambers.

Agreed. I blame it on the advertising media complex

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#446

Post by [deleted] »

petra wrote: post #354
Nextgrid wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google can trivially reduce the amount of spam by using the amount of ads, analytics, affiliate links, etc as a negative ranking signal. Instead of targeting SEO per-se (as it's difficult to determine a good website with SEO vs a spam website with SEO), target how they're making money. They're not doing so exactly because they have no incentive.

What incentives do they have to promote affiliate links to Amazon ? It's a bit more complicated than that. Even useful sites in commercially related niches use affiliate links as a source of revenue.

[deleted]

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#447

Post by Nextgrid »

petra wrote: post #354
Nextgrid wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google can trivially reduce the amount of spam by using the amount of ads, analytics, affiliate links, etc as a negative ranking signal. Instead of targeting SEO per-se (as it's difficult to determine a good website with SEO vs a spam website with SEO), target how they're making money. They're not doing so exactly because they have no incentive.

What incentives do they have to promote affiliate links to Amazon ? It's a bit more complicated than that. Even useful sites in commercially related niches use affiliate links as a source of revenue.

I’m not saying they promote them explicitly. I’m arguing that they should downrank them because it’s a likely indicator of spam - there’s a lot of spam websites out there which are just bullshit listicles or fake review websites whose primary objective is to get you to buy through their affiliated link. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s software out there that can churn out and update these websites automatically. Google has no incentive to downrank these though because those spam websites also often contain Google analytics or ads.

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#448

Post by onetokeoverthe »

thrwawy283 wrote: post #80
kauguste281 wrote: post #65

Google sucks compared to Google from years ago. It's still vastly superior to the modern alternatives. It doesn't help that almost all alternatives out there are just Bing with different window dressing, so going through alternatives is just annoying as they have all the same holes in the search results. Another big issue is that everybody just tries to copy Google. I don't need Google in less good, I want to see som…

You mentioned things I hadn't thought of. Google's Search accomplishes the goals of 10 years ago, but steps no further than that. It treats its power users like kids, and offers no complex filtering to do things like removing search results that require logins. Librarians love when you come to them to specifically refine your search. Google still has the most useful search, but they've taken away methods to get bette…

No post body was provided.

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#449

Post by Kuinox »

lolinder wrote: post #159
Kuinox wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, Kagi is not yet "better in 90% of the queries" than google, it's good enough to not have to launch google in 90% of it's query.

It's substantially better than Google for what I do with it (mostly work-related queries). A few reasons why: * It blocks all the GitHub and Stack Overflow copycat sites out of the box. * I can add additional sites to the block list with two clicks. * It up-ranks (semi-)official documentation like the Python docs or MDN over blog spam sites. * I can manually up-rank sites (and even pin them to the top of the results)…

I already have an extension that's allow me to block, or highlights results on Google or Bing

Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?

#450

Post by martha_neeva »

kodah wrote: post #436
vivekraghunatha wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Founder of Neeva here) Appreciate the input and hear your frustration. This is a carryover from changes we made to introduce the free tier earlier in the quarter. We are making imminent improvements on modal frequency and getting them out of your way. Stay posted.

Yo! Neeva is a dope product, imo, but could I offer some suggestions on how I use Neeva? 1. I have more than one GitHub account (one is for work, one is for personal stuff). I would like to somehow keep them separate, but at least being able to add multiple GitHub accounts for indexing would be cool. 2. Could Neeva offer something for segmenting the parts of my online presence? For instance, there's personal me and t…

Hi! Thanks for your notes here. I'll take these suggestions back to our team. re: 2. Being able to connect two accounts is interesting -- right now I solve this by having two Neeva accounts, one associated with my work email and one with my personal email.
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