Google Memory Loss • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Memory Loss

#481

Post by Chaebixi » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 5:18 PM UTC

cbar_tx wrote: post #247

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.

that's not Android keyboard. That's Google keyboard. Solution: use a different keyboard. I've used the AOSP keyboard since I started using Android. Sure it's made by google but it does what I say rather than what some proprietary idiot robot thinks I think. While your'e at it, use the send feedback function to let them know you hate it.

> that's not Android keyboard. That's Google keyboard. Solution: use a different keyboard. I've used the AOSP keyboard since I started using Android.

How to I try the AOSP keyboard? I have a Google Pixel and it looks like my only built-in option is Gboard. I'm guessing they removed it.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#482

Post by nezzle » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 5:19 PM UTC

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…

You fail CAPTCHAs and get flagged as a robot. Are you sure you're not a robot?

I have the same problem.

To pass Google CAPTCHA you have to perform like an average human. This is different from getting it right. Once I started being lazier, (e.g. back of a sign isn't a sign, picture that contains a storefront but in the distance doesn't contain a storefront), I have had greater success rates.

It's like Google is training me to be dumber.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#483

Post by Spooky23 » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 5:26 PM UTC

Spearchucker wrote: post #470

Spooky23 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft does this too. I have a massive mailbox going back 15 years and O365 doesn’t handle it well with full text search... you need to scope it to a person.

My email arching ve going back more than 20 years is stored in a single .PST file, and I search it using Outlook. Never had a problem. Every 3 months I copy everything older than 2 months from Exchange Online into that .PST.

Outlook is totally different, and I agree it works perfectly.

I'm talking about OWA Search in O365. I use mostly VDI these days, so PSTs are out. It's a frustrating issue to me because OWA search is better in many ways for more recent stuff.

Also note this is an anecdotal interpretation based on my experience.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#484

Post by cup-of-tea » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 5:29 PM UTC

m12k wrote: post #441

cup-of-tea wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 it was that would be strange and innapropriate Yes, that was my thought too, hence why I asked them if that was indeed what they meant by it. An archaic/dialectic spelling of reckless is strange too though, so I'm not really sure which is more likely. Just out of curiosity - if it only just now occurred to you that 'rackless' could refer to her body, then what did you think I was calling the comment out for?

I thought you were one of those overly sensitive types that got offended easily. You never know these days.

It's funny because it says a lot about some people who immediately thought it was a comment about breasts rather than either a typo, alternatively spelling or rack referring to data centre technology (on a technology site).

Re: Google Memory Loss

#485

Post by tripzilch » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 5:31 PM UTC

cromwellian wrote: post #208

dannyw wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good thing is SEO optimized content is relatively trivial to distinguish from the snippet, and other search engines like DuckDuckGo feel far more reliable and consistent without being overrun by SEO junk. You do have a point however.

Not really, not for most people, especially for farm sites like eHow. If you ask how to make a tequila, you'd get an SEO-optimized eHow site instead of say, an authoritative page of the world's top tequila expert. If DDG was so good, people wouldn't need to use !g for tail queries so much. Too much anecdotal claims every time these issues come up and no objective quality evaluation.

I mainly use !g for the "stupid" queries, actually. The ones where I would actually prefer Google's AI second-guessing me. Also "local"-type searches. I don't voluntarily give Google my location[0] but if I type the city name too, it works fine. Actually I just tried and DDG does it just as well and gives a map and address too, so I may go for that next time.

Except for lyrics, DDG is quite good at that and often even presents the proper "zero click result" straight away (though usually the lyrics are cut off at a point and I still need to click).

On the other hand, the vast majority of my DDG queries are !bangs for other sites, because I know what site will have the page I'm looking for. Usually !w for Wikipedia (and the other wikipedia stuff like !wnl and !wt), after that probably one of the image searches !gi/!yi/!bi, then !imdb, !discogs and !whosampled. Oh and occasionally !hn, of course :)

I believe that DDG would have had a lot harder time getting as successful as it is today if Google had retained its old "AND" search engine behaviour (as explained above, keywords used to have an implied "AND" between them).

[0] I only log in to these types of big "social" things using a private tab, for GMail and to get my personal YouTube suggestions and subscriptions. It's a bit of a hassle to use the 2FA Authenticator code every time after I closed my browser, but it's worth Google not tying everything I search to my account, or getting "bubbled".

Re: Google Memory Loss

#486

Post by nine_k » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 5:39 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…

Let's not forget that Google is an ad company, operating a search engine for that purpose.

I bet long-tail queries, while capable of carrying very targeted ads with a high CTR, are just too rare and thus less profitable. Likely much more people have basically no clue and formulate queries approximately, and very few query precisely in improbable ways, so getting the majority to the results they "meant" gives better financial results.

To tell the truth, you still can enter the "verbatim mode" using a menu, and try to find that improbable cluster of words. It's an advanced feature now, requiring a bit of digging, but it's there.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#487

Post by tripzilch » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 5:41 PM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #239

gaius wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

very superficial information, will try to rewrite your queries and omit words (including the very word that makes all the difference --- I didn't put it in the search query for nothing!) This is the algorithm deciding that it’s way results in more ad revenue for Google. What do you do? You repeat the query again and they show you a second lot of ads. But let’s be honest if Google could show you as many ads without re…

Ads? What ads? I see no ads.

I actually forgot there's ads in Google's result pages. It's been ages since I've last seen them, uBlock is the first thing extension I install on a fresh Firefox.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#488

Post by JCzynski » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 5:44 PM UTC

nezzle wrote: post #482

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…

You fail CAPTCHAs and get flagged as a robot. Are you sure you're not a robot? I have the same problem. To pass Google CAPTCHA you have to perform like an average human. This is different from getting it right. Once I started being lazier, (e.g. back of a sign isn't a sign, picture that contains a storefront but in the distance doesn't contain a storefront), I have had greater success rates. It's like Google is train…

An image containing the back of the sign doesn't contain a sign. A sign is the front. The back is just a flat surface, not a sign.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#489

Post by nine_k » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

gizmo686 wrote: post #287

copx wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they don't but I know what you are referring to. Most of the time I get the result: No results found for [phrase] Results for [phrase] (without quotes) ..but the thing is that I know websites containing [phrase] exist. Often many of them and they aren't "dark web" either. Google used to be able to find them but no longer is. This gets more confusing because sometimes it does work. Namely if you look for phrases w…

It seems to work [0]. [0] https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=f6xdWs2KJq7k_Qb0k...

This is what it looks like to me: https://imgur.com/zre6HdT

Probably this is because such pages do not exist, except for this page. Or at least DDG thinks so: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22It+never+rains+on+a+Wednesday+i...

Re: Google Memory Loss

#490

Post by tripzilch » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 5:51 PM UTC

fixermark wrote: post #131

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…

I wonder if what you're seeing is a result of the Internet growing, not specifically Google degrading. Which is to say, as the indexable dataset grows, you'd expect the individual indices to turn up more and more heterogeneous results over time.

Nice theory, but it's Google degrading. They actually removed features for more accurate searching. Or they arbitrarily ignore them--all the people in this thread saying that "word" now functions like +word used to, are mistaken (or didn't use it much in the past decade) because often it does not.

And you didn't even need to use +word for most words, because it would only give you results that hit all the keywords in the query. You only needed the + operator to include "stop words", a relatively short list of common words that Google would filter out.

Also, given that personal webpages are way less popular than they used to, the Internet might not even be growing that fast, at least not the parts that contain the type of random useful info that we used to be searching for. They can't index Facebook (not very deep), or most of the popular mainstream services that people write their thoughts into.