5 ms·

I really think this is a case of confirmation bias. We see Google approaching this dominating mass that's impossible to stop, so we begin looking for ways to te

I really think this is a case of confirmation bias. We see Google approaching this dominating mass that's impossible to stop, so we begin looking for ways to tear down big brother and look for holes. So, we notice every spam entry. I work in search and I can't recollect a time EVER having been frustrated with what Google gave me - and having to go to another engine. And I live, eat, & breathe the thing. I understand I have a notoriously small sample (as compared to the entire world of search - and I generally search for terms that have been optimized by similar search professionals), but the idea is that really, 10 good search results is pretty much impossible - what matters is that there is always three-four results on every page that are relevant. And without fail, Google continues to deliver this - at least for me. This process is what occurs for every monopoly. We hate the Yankees, Microsoft, whatever. It's natural to want to bring down something so dominating. But for me, Google is doing an absolutely incredible job. The only potential I see for something like DDG unseating them (or even gaining legitimate market share) is if Google loses the ability to pivot. If this occurs, the dilution of the algorithm is possible, which could turn their product to crap. BUT, given their history of 200+ algorithm changes per year, they have shown that not to be the case. Because of this, I imagine Google will be with us - & strongly with us - for the entirety of our lifetimes.

blacksmythe 16y ago
>> I really think this is a case of confirmation bias. We see Google approaching this dominating mass that's impossible to stop, so we begin looking for ways to tear down big brother and look for holes. I think that this is a case where we were comparing Google to what existing before (Yahoo, etc), and thought "this is great". Now we compare Google only to what we think it 'should' be.
- birken 16y ago
  And we never imagine what the internet would be like without Google. You think spam is bad now? It's possible that in a world without Google web search just wouldn't work because Bing or Yahoo (or altavista, cuil, powerset, or whoever) just couldn't deal with the spam. Certainly Google isn't perfect, but they do a pretty good job combating web spam that is explicitly targeted at them.
- thaumaturgy 16y ago
  For me, I remember how great Google was when I started using it around 1999, compared to AltaVista or Metacrawler; it was great because it was able to find results that the other two just couldn't, and it did it quickly. Lately, I've found myself feeling like search is back in 1999 again.
  - patrickaljord 16y ago
    > Lately, I've found myself feeling like search is back in 1999 again. You're spoiled then.
    - thaumaturgy 16y ago
      "It could be worse" is always a valid rebuttal to any complaint. But it doesn't actually move the conversation forward at all.
      - patrickaljord 16y ago
        But I didn't mean "It could be worse", I meant google search is actually amazing and I find what I'm looking for 99% of the time.
    - habith 16y ago
      > You're spoiled then. Spoiled? I remember search being horrendous back in those days. It was almost exact word matching and it took hours to find relevant results. Google was a breath of fresh air back then (especially since they didn't run all those X10 ads and popups ala Yahoo!). I've switched to Bing a few months ago for tin-foil-haty reasons, and also being disappointed in the way Google interpreted some of my queries (for some reason the plus sign doesn't mean anything anymore). I occasionally use Google when I give up on finding something on Bing, but 99% of the time 4-5 results of the first page are pages I already found on Bing, with the rest being irrelevant results. I too wasn't aware of the search tools that Matt Cutts mentioned above, I'll give it a try the next time I'm having a hard time finding something with a date restriction.
  - Matt_Cutts 16y ago
VBprogrammer 16y ago
I think part of the problem is that for many people google is the internet. Even for me (pretty technically minded) if a few google searches doesn't find what I'm looking for it isn't on the internet, or might as well not be. I don't think I've even tried turning to another search engine in several years.
- squidsoup 16y ago
  Which begs the question, are there regions of the web that just simply aren't indexed?
  - patrickaljord 16y ago
    Those that blacklist googlebot on their robots.txt
    - mfukar 16y ago
      ...allegedly.
  - Matt_Cutts 16y ago
    Absolutely there are, despite our efforts. See the bmtcinfo.com example mentioned elsewhere on this page. But normally there's a good reason if we don't have a page, e.g. bmtcinfo.com returns an error unless you add a "www" in front of it.
- Matt_Cutts 16y ago
  It's tricky. Google gets well over 1B searches a day. And each week, 1B users search on Google. Most of those searchers aren't as savvy as HN folks. They do things like misspell ~10% of queries, not to mention searching in weird ways. Only one double-quote in the query? How should we interpret that? So Google has power search operators and we introduce new tools like the left-hand side searching tools, but we also have to try to be accessible for the folks that aren't that tech-savvy.
  - 16y ago

blacksmythe 16y ago

>> I really think this is a case of confirmation bias. We see Google approaching this dominating mass that's impossible to stop, so we begin looking for ways to tear down big brother and look for holes. I think that this is a case where we were comparing Google to what existing before (Yahoo, etc), and thought "this is great". Now we compare Google only to what we think it 'should' be.

birken 16y ago
And we never imagine what the internet would be like without Google. You think spam is bad now? It's possible that in a world without Google web search just wouldn't work because Bing or Yahoo (or altavista, cuil, powerset, or whoever) just couldn't deal with the spam. Certainly Google isn't perfect, but they do a pretty good job combating web spam that is explicitly targeted at them.
thaumaturgy 16y ago
For me, I remember how great Google was when I started using it around 1999, compared to AltaVista or Metacrawler; it was great because it was able to find results that the other two just couldn't, and it did it quickly. Lately, I've found myself feeling like search is back in 1999 again.
- patrickaljord 16y ago
  > Lately, I've found myself feeling like search is back in 1999 again. You're spoiled then.
  - thaumaturgy 16y ago
    "It could be worse" is always a valid rebuttal to any complaint. But it doesn't actually move the conversation forward at all.
    - patrickaljord 16y ago
      But I didn't mean "It could be worse", I meant google search is actually amazing and I find what I'm looking for 99% of the time.
  - habith 16y ago
    > You're spoiled then. Spoiled? I remember search being horrendous back in those days. It was almost exact word matching and it took hours to find relevant results. Google was a breath of fresh air back then (especially since they didn't run all those X10 ads and popups ala Yahoo!). I've switched to Bing a few months ago for tin-foil-haty reasons, and also being disappointed in the way Google interpreted some of my queries (for some reason the plus sign doesn't mean anything anymore). I occasionally use Google when I give up on finding something on Bing, but 99% of the time 4-5 results of the first page are pages I already found on Bing, with the rest being irrelevant results. I too wasn't aware of the search tools that Matt Cutts mentioned above, I'll give it a try the next time I'm having a hard time finding something with a date restriction.
- Matt_Cutts 16y ago

VBprogrammer 16y ago

I think part of the problem is that for many people google is the internet. Even for me (pretty technically minded) if a few google searches doesn't find what I'm looking for it isn't on the internet, or might as well not be. I don't think I've even tried turning to another search engine in several years.

squidsoup 16y ago
Which begs the question, are there regions of the web that just simply aren't indexed?
- patrickaljord 16y ago
  Those that blacklist googlebot on their robots.txt
  - mfukar 16y ago
    ...allegedly.
- Matt_Cutts 16y ago
  Absolutely there are, despite our efforts. See the bmtcinfo.com example mentioned elsewhere on this page. But normally there's a good reason if we don't have a page, e.g. bmtcinfo.com returns an error unless you add a "www" in front of it.
Matt_Cutts 16y ago
It's tricky. Google gets well over 1B searches a day. And each week, 1B users search on Google. Most of those searchers aren't as savvy as HN folks. They do things like misspell ~10% of queries, not to mention searching in weird ways. Only one double-quote in the query? How should we interpret that? So Google has power search operators and we introduce new tools like the left-hand side searching tools, but we also have to try to be accessible for the folks that aren't that tech-savvy.
- 16y ago