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Yes, Google is actually crucial. I didn’t realize how uniquely good Google’s programming results were until I tried Bing or DuckDuckGo and was left confused be

Yes, Google is actually crucial. I didn’t realize how uniquely good Google’s programming results were until I tried Bing or DuckDuckGo and was left confused because their top results didn’t even mention some pretty significant page on a target subject. I am however noticing a trend that I don’t like in Google results: they are trying to interpret pages more and more instead of just being a proxy. (No thanks, Google, I don’t want your attempt at a pretty summary of a Wikipedia page or StackOverflow post; the link will do nicely. Besides, it is just a little obnoxious to lift content from other sites that may prevent people from visiting those sites entirely.) Google is not my sole search tool though. I still find it faster to search offline for a lot of things; for instance, if you have a Mac and haven’t tried something like Dash for quick access to API documentation, you are really missing a potential productivity boost. And, offline search helps a lot on airplanes.

developer2 10y ago
The "interpreting", as you put it, can be really odd at times. I tend to think that in the majority of cases, it works perfectly and you do in fact get your answer without even having to click through to the site. Whether this is a Good Thing™ or a Bad Thing™ is left to each individual's discretion. It's a little funny when the interpretation doesn't show anything useful. I've noticed this is often the case when they rip an html table out of the document and show partial rows/columns in the result set. They'll frequently display the column that contains your search term (the "key" so to speak), but exclude the column that contains the matching information you're looking for (the "value"). Other times, though less frequently, there are "answers" to your search query that just make absolutely no sense.

developer2 10y ago

The "interpreting", as you put it, can be really odd at times. I tend to think that in the majority of cases, it works perfectly and you do in fact get your answer without even having to click through to the site. Whether this is a Good Thing™ or a Bad Thing™ is left to each individual's discretion. It's a little funny when the interpretation doesn't show anything useful. I've noticed this is often the case when they rip an html table out of the document and show partial rows/columns in the result set. They'll frequently display the column that contains your search term (the "key" so to speak), but exclude the column that contains the matching information you're looking for (the "value"). Other times, though less frequently, there are "answers" to your search query that just make absolutely no sense.