6 ms·

They mastered search. They mastered mapping.

by jahnu 10y ago

slmyers 10y ago
Is anything truly "mastered"?
- iopq 10y ago
  It's not "perfect", it's just "mastered"
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
    What's the difference?
    - SXX 10y ago
      Probably "mastered" mean constant quality.
    - iopq 10y ago
      A grandmaster chess player has mastered chess, but he can't play perfectly because he's still a human.
- lorenzhs 10y ago
  Just yesterday I got a blank result page for a sensible query, seems to have hit some rarely visited bucket combined with a busy machine somewhere or the like, and the background request timed out. Of course a refresh fixed it, but software is never perfect.
redthrowaway 10y ago
Search has stagnated. Google has gotten scarily good at anticipating what I want to know, but conspicuously bad at answering hard questions. There's tons of room for improvement. Similarly, Google Maps has added features that make it a better map, and it's a great place to find what time a store closes and what their phone number is. But it's been essentially the same service, with iterative improvements, for years. There's a world of possible uses for that data beyond what we imagine when we think of a map.
- _pmf_ 10y ago
  > Google has gotten scarily good at anticipating what I want to know, but conspicuously bad at answering hard questions. Well, 98 percent of the market is not asking hard questions, so by dropping support, they are actually making their search product more tailored towards their market.
- sievebrain 10y ago
  I suspect Google Search has not actually had quality regressions, but rather that your expectations have gone up over time without you realising it.
  - matwood 10y ago
    This. It used to be the first page of results was good enough. Now if it is not in the top 3-4, I refine my query.
  - redthrowaway 10y ago
    Yes, I might have phrased that poorly. Google Search still finds relevant web pages just as well as it did 5 years ago, perhaps better. It certainly has leveraged the data it collects on me to suggest search terms in a way that's almost eerie. But it's still a tool to find relevant pages, not a tool to find answers. It's made some progress with the semantic web and knowledge graph, but that still provides basic facts about people, places, and things. At its core, it's still a portal. It's still just a much better version of Excite. Search today feels like it did in 1997: a "solved problem" ripe for disruption. Google has the talent, technology, and data to produce something an order of magnitude better.
- tudorw 10y ago
  I agree, I think search is ripe for disruption, Google is the old guard in this respect, I think they reached a crossroads where improvements in their search experience did not translate to increased revenue, and they stuck with this 'good enough' solution which made a predictable amount of money. I still show many users the 'filter by date' drop down and it's the first time they have seen it, it still does not offer me any way to restrict my searches to categories, though it certainly seems to have 'knowledge' based data in reach when it shows me adverts. There is surely much more that can be done, most competitors seem to want to match reach rather than innovate on the UI, I'm sure there are lots of startups out there, so if anyone wants to point me in the right direction feel free :)

They mastered search. They mastered mapping.

by jahnu 10y ago

They mastered search. They mastered mapping.

slmyers 10y ago

Is anything truly "mastered"?

iopq 10y ago
It's not "perfect", it's just "mastered"
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  What's the difference?
  - SXX 10y ago
    Probably "mastered" mean constant quality.
  - iopq 10y ago
    A grandmaster chess player has mastered chess, but he can't play perfectly because he's still a human.
lorenzhs 10y ago
Just yesterday I got a blank result page for a sensible query, seems to have hit some rarely visited bucket combined with a busy machine somewhere or the like, and the background request timed out. Of course a refresh fixed it, but software is never perfect.

redthrowaway 10y ago

Search has stagnated. Google has gotten scarily good at anticipating what I want to know, but conspicuously bad at answering hard questions. There's tons of room for improvement. Similarly, Google Maps has added features that make it a better map, and it's a great place to find what time a store closes and what their phone number is. But it's been essentially the same service, with iterative improvements, for years. There's a world of possible uses for that data beyond what we imagine when we think of a map.

_pmf_ 10y ago
> Google has gotten scarily good at anticipating what I want to know, but conspicuously bad at answering hard questions. Well, 98 percent of the market is not asking hard questions, so by dropping support, they are actually making their search product more tailored towards their market.
sievebrain 10y ago
I suspect Google Search has not actually had quality regressions, but rather that your expectations have gone up over time without you realising it.
- matwood 10y ago
  This. It used to be the first page of results was good enough. Now if it is not in the top 3-4, I refine my query.
- redthrowaway 10y ago
  Yes, I might have phrased that poorly. Google Search still finds relevant web pages just as well as it did 5 years ago, perhaps better. It certainly has leveraged the data it collects on me to suggest search terms in a way that's almost eerie. But it's still a tool to find relevant pages, not a tool to find answers. It's made some progress with the semantic web and knowledge graph, but that still provides basic facts about people, places, and things. At its core, it's still a portal. It's still just a much better version of Excite. Search today feels like it did in 1997: a "solved problem" ripe for disruption. Google has the talent, technology, and data to produce something an order of magnitude better.
tudorw 10y ago
I agree, I think search is ripe for disruption, Google is the old guard in this respect, I think they reached a crossroads where improvements in their search experience did not translate to increased revenue, and they stuck with this 'good enough' solution which made a predictable amount of money. I still show many users the 'filter by date' drop down and it's the first time they have seen it, it still does not offer me any way to restrict my searches to categories, though it certainly seems to have 'knowledge' based data in reach when it shows me adverts. There is surely much more that can be done, most competitors seem to want to match reach rather than innovate on the UI, I'm sure there are lots of startups out there, so if anyone wants to point me in the right direction feel free :)