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Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

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Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#591

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

jobigoud wrote: post #566
xg15 wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a user, I'm still baffled that the interface to view and manage the apps I have installed on the system - which is 90 out of 100 times why I'm opening the play store - is tucked away in some obscure corner of the app. The other 10 times, it's because I want to install some specific app that I already know and I just want to get to the page of that exact app - either through a direct link or through the store's sea…

> the interface to view and manage the apps I have installed on the system Why do you go to the play store to view and manage installed apps? If you swipe up from home screen you should get to the app drawer. Or Settings > Apps.

If you want to do manual updates you do it in play store rather than the OS settings utility. That is buried under your account settings which isn't logically related.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#592

Post by arcbyte »

xg15 wrote: post #524
jsheard wrote: post #12

They do the same thing on the Play Store, for example I just searched for Firefox and the first result is a sponsored spot for Opera. Does Apple do that on the App Store? A funnier example: searching for Amazon gives Temu as the first result. Searching for Temu gives Shein as the first result. Searching for Shein gives Shein as the first result! ...but only because they outbid everyone else for the ad spot on their o…

As a user, I'm still baffled that the interface to view and manage the apps I have installed on the system - which is 90 out of 100 times why I'm opening the play store - is tucked away in some obscure corner of the app. The other 10 times, it's because I want to install some specific app that I already know and I just want to get to the page of that exact app - either through a direct link or through the store's sea…

I actually do open the app store specifically to find a cool new app to install. I do this maybe a couple times a year.

It never works. The apps it suggests are all ad farming garbage. I have found maybe one fun game doing this over the years, but mostly its been repeated frustration. I keep doing it occasionally in hopes that I find another diamond in the rough but I think Google has just trashed this whole thing up.

There is probably a set of users who download tons of apps and throw money after them like crazy, and that's probably what Google has optimized for.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#593

Post by close04 »

buellerbueller wrote: post #579
close04 wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you go to IKEA for IKEA and get IKEA. With the phone stores or search engines you go to them for $result and you get $something_else. It's similar but not quite the same. Even the parallel with the physical world fails us here, IKEA can't put everyone's desired product at the entrance. Google can.

When I go to IKEA for a desk chair, I have to walk though many other unrelated things to see the desk chairs. The difference is that IKEA sells IKEA only.

> I have to walk though many other unrelated things to see the desk chairs

That's what I was trying to say earlier with the limitations of the physical world. IKEA implements a lot of psychological tricks to get your eyeballs on as many products as they can but at the end of the day they can have only so many corridors and entrances to the store. You want a chair, I want a pillow, someone else wants a flower pot. Sooner or later someone will need to walk a bit to get to what they want, IKEA can't put everything right at the entrance.

But Google can put my desired result right at the top, at the entrance. It's the advantage of digital, it can be changed to suit each individual user. As it turns out, Google made it only their advantage.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#594

Post by yearesadpeople »

Ideally, searching once for 'midjourney' would mean getting the url to directly access it time and again (and, create a bookmark). Perhaps the issue is more on the business model, rather than the effectivness of search offered by Google.

What is search anyway (not being flippant!)? Its quite an odd 'thing' really these days.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#595

Post by shayway »

infecto wrote: post #572

There also has been a drastic change in YouTube search in the past year. It used to be that search would be logical, you search for a specific string and you can go through pages of videos that matchup to that. Now it at least feels like they have completely mixed that original search with a some sort of ranked preference of what they think I want to see. It’s a shame and an actual huge downgrade.

Try searching something and sorting results by most recent. If you then change the upload date filter (e.g. from 'this month' to 'last hour') you'll get completely different results...

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#596

Post by cuu508 »

jeremyjh wrote: post #74
LorenDB wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also should just stop using Google Search. DuckDuckGo is solid, or if you don't want to use search results from Bing's index, I've been very happy with Brave Search.

I agree about DDG, but I find Kagi worth paying for.

Unfortunately Kagi partners with Yandex https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio...

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#597

Post by cmrdporcupine »

coldpie wrote: post #584
zeroq wrote: post #373

One of my "sales pitches" is "I can find answers online, I know kung-fu". I've been using internet since '98, and I somehow developed this elusive skill of knowing how to navigate all these ads, seo farms, paid content, murky websites, and getting straight to the answer, no matter what the question was. For a long time I didn't thought of that as a special power. I thought it was natural, like driving a car, or speak…

Is Perplexity, as a business, sustainable? I'm skeptical of these "AI search is better than web search" claims. Not because it's not true, but because of how wildly subsidized these AI things are. Web search doesn't suck because it's an impossible problem, web search sucks because it has to be profitable, and the profitability comes from making it suck. That's not true today for AI tools, but it will be in a few year…

For this kind of thing I'm an LLM skeptic, but

People said the same thing you're saying about Google in the late 90s, early 2000s before their IPO (and immediately afterwards). There was a sense in which people didn't really think search -- which seemed more like a public utility -- could ever be profitable. Yahoo and AltaVista and Excite blanketed theirs in ads and junk. The search itself was seen merely as a draw into a "portal."

It's not inevitable that the same thing happen with services like Perplexity. But I do think things are going to get shaken up.

It seems like Google agrees at some level, because they seem to have just given up.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#599

Post by Little_Kitty »

jsheard wrote: post #12

They do the same thing on the Play Store, for example I just searched for Firefox and the first result is a sponsored spot for Opera. Does Apple do that on the App Store? A funnier example: searching for Amazon gives Temu as the first result. Searching for Temu gives Shein as the first result. Searching for Shein gives Shein as the first result! ...but only because they outbid everyone else for the ad spot on their o…

The sponsored spot is appalling, I reported something that looked dodgy which appeared above the UK gov identity verification for passports and such app. When people search for a specific app, putting something else in front only makes me think you are untrustworthy scum, so my trust in the play store is fundamentally broken. There's a fundamental incompatibility between giving the right result for what was searched for and pushing promoted irrelevant results.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#600

Post by alex77456 »

thecopy wrote: post #568
zeroq wrote: post #373

One of my "sales pitches" is "I can find answers online, I know kung-fu". I've been using internet since '98, and I somehow developed this elusive skill of knowing how to navigate all these ads, seo farms, paid content, murky websites, and getting straight to the answer, no matter what the question was. For a long time I didn't thought of that as a special power. I thought it was natural, like driving a car, or speak…

Try DuckDuck Go, it performs significantly better than Google for me

It only works well for mainstream search subjects. If something is slightly off the spotlight, it will often fail to find it even with exact name of the page/article in quotes in my experience.
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