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Finding information has never been trivial and until you can read people's minds to see what they really mean when they search for 'cookies' when they really me

Finding information has never been trivial and until you can read people's minds to see what they really mean when they search for 'cookies' when they really mean "how to clear my internet browsing history for the past hour" it will continue to be non-trivial. The work Google has done in the search space is damn near magical. Your question belittles the literal billions of dollars and millions of man hours that have gone into making the current and previous implementations of Google's search engine almost good enough. This is not simple, and your Ask HN reeks of ideology and contempt without so much as an inkling of the technical realities that would have to be overcome for such a thing to happen. That goes for both old and new internet. /rant

boblebricoleur 7y ago
> Your question belittles the literal billions of dollars and millions of man hours that have gone into making the current and previous implementations of Google's search engine I don't think this question belittles Google's work. I feel saying that would be like saying that animals that chose to live on the land were belittling millions of years of evolution in the water. People working at Google chose to spends their time building a search engine for the world wide web, fine. That does not mean that sharing information accross a network has to be done via { world wide web, google }. All of this is purely theroical of course, but I'm sure someone more creative than me would find another solution. Maybe not a solution that would exactly fit OP's description, maybe not a solution that would be practical with the current infrastructure. But a solution that would render Google as-is obsolete ? Yes, I think that would be possible.
cf141q5325 7y ago
Tbh I have the feeling search results get a lot worse as a result of google trying to guess what I am looking for. The occurrences of me not finding stuff where I know I used the right search terms increased a lot recently. If I search for cookies I want the results for cookies and nothing else. If the first few results ignore part of my search query something is seriously wrong.

boblebricoleur 7y ago

> Your question belittles the literal billions of dollars and millions of man hours that have gone into making the current and previous implementations of Google's search engine I don't think this question belittles Google's work. I feel saying that would be like saying that animals that chose to live on the land were belittling millions of years of evolution in the water. People working at Google chose to spends their time building a search engine for the world wide web, fine. That does not mean that sharing information accross a network has to be done via { world wide web, google }. All of this is purely theroical of course, but I'm sure someone more creative than me would find another solution. Maybe not a solution that would exactly fit OP's description, maybe not a solution that would be practical with the current infrastructure. But a solution that would render Google as-is obsolete ? Yes, I think that would be possible.

cf141q5325 7y ago

Tbh I have the feeling search results get a lot worse as a result of google trying to guess what I am looking for. The occurrences of me not finding stuff where I know I used the right search terms increased a lot recently. If I search for cookies I want the results for cookies and nothing else. If the first few results ignore part of my search query something is seriously wrong.