Google Memory Loss • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Memory Loss

#471

Post by gerbilly » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 4:20 PM UTC

habosa wrote: post #456

Many people here are pining for the old days of Google search where if you knew the operators and some tricks you could develop very specific queries and get a page that matches exactly. I remember those days too. It did feel like Google search skill was a super power. I also remember my non technical friends and family being pretty much unable to find what they were looking for online. Google did not turn their ramb…

> Google is incredible at guessing what you want.

More like guessing what most people want.

If you want something specific, sometimes you re out of luck.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#472

Post by the_af » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 4:23 PM UTC

Larrikin wrote: post #266

colordrops wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This same AI effect can be seen in the Android keyboard, where _properly_ spelled words will be replaced after typing another word or two because it's been determined to be more likely what you want. It's infuriating.

It's all the keyboards. Swype used to work great, but now when it actually gets words right, if I have sentence with a second word that could possibly have been two similar words on the path it will just straight up replace both rendering the sentence completely incomprehensible. Who are these people that don't correct their sentences until the second incorrect word?

Wow. Thanks. I thought it was just me!

I had a Galaxy S3 and was a heavy user of Swype. My friends marveled at how fast I could type with it. It was perfect! I recently changed my phone to an S8 and Swype became unusable. It gets almost every second word wrong, so much that I'm thinking of disabling it entirely :(

Re: Google Memory Loss

#473

Post by WalterSear » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 4:33 PM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #270

haraldooo wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn‘t they drop the + operator when they launched Google+? I thought now you have to surround your term with „“ instead of +?

Yes, you're right, they did this a looong time ago... BUT, sometimes Google still insists on showing you results that don't contain the word or phrase that you've explicitly requested must be in the results - utterly infuriating !

Especially when that word is 'not'.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#474

Post by pishpash » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 4:40 PM UTC

fixermark wrote: post #427

pishpash wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be the internet (content) growing, or it could be the search engine changing, but to me, the most salient change over 20 years is the internet user base changing. At the risk of sounding elitist, the users of the internet have become a lot dumber on average. Search engines therefore grew dumber relative to the one that was tuned to people who were early adopters and used the tool for more productive purposes…

With respect: yes, that does sound elitist. I would avoid assuming early use cases were more productive than subsequent average use cases (for one thing, it risks defining "productive" as "stuff I like to do," not via some more objective metric like "revenue generated," "human needs satisfied," or "questions answered").

On the objective side, most revenue today is from advertisement and ad-generating content. Search engines make it easy to find ads, essentially. It's not about the content itself any more. So there is that.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#475

Post by dreamcompiler » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 4:51 PM UTC

mkl wrote: post #412

dreamcompiler wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never used a BB, but I did have a bunch of "dumb" cell phones, and I miss them. Making calls on them was easy: Flip open, press Talk, dial, Success! Now it's: Turn the phone on (which takes approximately 60 seconds on my Samsung because it can't see keystrokes until it finishes trying to connect to wifi), hit Home button, wait 3 seconds for that to work, hit Phone icon, wait 2 seconds, hit keyboard button, wait 1 s…

I think you need a better phone. I have none of these problems on my Samsung Galaxy Note 4.

This is a Galaxy S6. I'd probably get better performance if I didn't keep it in low-power mode, but I have no choice because the quest for thinner phones means the battery only lasts 2 hours in regular-power mode.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#476

Post by greenhouse_gas » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 4:58 PM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #353

greenhouse_gas wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, from my experience: I wanted to see how Raspberry Pi assembly worked - quite a niche subject (who programs? In assembly? On a Raspberry Pi?). Yet I found quite a few blogs going through the subject - a tutorial of sorts. I was also looking up how to write an OS (just for fun) - another fairly niche field. Yet I found tons of tutorials in C, C++, and Rust. I remember trying the same in the 1990s. Na…

Search engines didn't exist until the very end of the 90s. The 00's is the golden age I compare too. And yes there are still some small websites. But they are a lot less common. Especially if you aren't searching for them intentionally. They've made sure you won't accidentally stumble across them. For instance, I just searched "raspberry pi" and most of the results are companies selling them. There's also the officia…

>Search engines didn't exist until the very end of the 90s.

Both Yahoo and AltaVista were started in 95.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#477

Post by tripzilch » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 4:58 PM UTC

Declanomous wrote: post #101

userbinator wrote: post #93

I've noticed this many times too, particularly recently, and I call it "Google Alzheimer's" --- what was once a very powerful search engine that could give you thousands (yes, I've tried exhausting its result pages many times, and used to have much success finding the perfect site many dozens of pages deep in the results) of pages containing nothing but the exact words and phrase you search for has seemingly degraded…

> has seemingly degraded into an approximation of a search engine that has knowledge of only very superficial information, will try to rewrite your queries and omit words (including the very word that makes all the difference...) I think the biggest irony is that the web allows for more adoption of long-tail movements than ever before, and Google has gotten significantly worse at turning these up. I assume this has s…

> I can only imagine this has something to do with their increasing reliance on AI, and the fact that the AI is probably incentivized to give a correct response to as many people'above the fold' as is possible. If 95% of people are served by dropping the specifically-chosen search term, then the AI probably thinks it's doing a great job.

There has to be an additional reason though, otherwise they could've just put the AI "enhanced" above the fold, and append the actual accurate results below it, for the people doing research.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#478

Post by tripzilch » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 5:08 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #167

dannyw wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad I'm not alone in thinking this way. I wish I could use the Google of 10 years ago. Pre-personalization, pre-deep-learning RankBrain, just the reliable and consistent search engine where complex queries will return the result I want, if it is there. Today, if I'm searching for something unpopular or specific, I usually get frustrated. You would expect the opposite to happen as the size of the web should incre…

Using the Google of 10-years-ago on the Internet of 10-years-ago, or using the Google of 10-years-ago on the Internet of today? Because I imagine doing the latter would just result in an endless wasteland of SEO-optimized content leadgen pages.

Either would be pretty cool :)

Re: Google Memory Loss

#479

Post by yots » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

cup-of-tea wrote: post #438

yots wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not all of us. I didn't read the comment just fine either. I assumed a person who uses irrelevant misogynist slurs may have a personal grudge against the person he's insulting, so I'm not going to take anything he says about her very seriously.

Wait, misogynistic? You think "rackless" was a comment about her body? If it was that would be strange and innapropriate. I didn't read it that way and it didn't occur to me before this comment. I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt that it wasn't meant to be that because it would be so unexpected.

If this wasn't OP's intention, I deeply apologize. That was my understanding and I think it was m12k's too. I'm used to seeing civil discussion here and that's what made me dismissive of the original comment.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#480

Post by debt » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 5:13 PM UTC

Wait so Google isn't surfacing you or your friend's shitty article on some band you guys like so that makes it broken? Sounds like Google is working better than it used to.