4 ms·

Almost every thread that's somehow related to Google Search has this same question (which often goes to the top) and the same answers. It's difficult to imagin

by outime 7y ago

Almost every thread that's somehow related to Google Search has this same question (which often goes to the top) and the same answers. It's difficult to imagine that most of the people haven't seen this a bunch of times as well. And while I agree with this, I'd love to know why people keep asking and/or upvoting this same question over and over. Is it for the sole purpose of bashing Google or what is it? Honest question.

MiroF 7y ago
1. This is a big community and I haven't noticed this in every thread. 2. Google hasn't changed - so until they do, I suspect they will continue to be criticized. People generally will continuously criticize things that continuously screw them over.
andrewvc 7y ago
Yes, people have been switching to DDG for years now, yet still google is utterly dominant. Candidly, I'm mystified by the complaints. Google's search works great, and has for years for myself and everyone I know IRL. Any post about any product that isn't brand new on HN is going to get comments along the line of "Company X? Their product is garbage, it used to be great! I've been using <alternative that requires a ton of extra effort to setup> and once I got it going it was amazing!"
- snazz 7y ago
  I won’t argue about your experience, but DDG isn’t any harder to use than Google aside from the fact that you need to change your default search engine. That’s not a “ton of extra effort to setup”.
  - crispinb 7y ago
    When trying DDG again for a while, my use of g! gradually increases as a necessary tactic to surface what I'm looking for. When it gets to over about 80% I go back to using Google again with a sigh.
    - rjf72 7y ago
      Can you give some examples? I think a few years ago this was somewhat reasonable but in my opinion DDG has not only matched but surpassed Google for most searches. As an example (to not make this as if I'm only asking you to do the lifting) a random search that's relevant for me would be 'spacex rocket thrust.' Since Google's results are based on arbitrary tracking and whatever per user magic marketing metrics they decide to apply, it's not repeatable but I imagine you'll probably get at least something similar. We should get identical results for DDG: ----------- Google: - 4 redundant wiki pages (all link to each other) - 2 redundant links to spacex.com site (all link to each other) - 1 irrelevant theverge article on an arbitrary launch - 1 space.com link with some relevant information DDG: - 1 relevant wiki page - 2 redundant links to spacex.com site - 1 tangential article from space.com - 1 space.com link with some relevant information - 1 spaceflight101.com link with extremely relevant information - 1 irrelevant link from teslarati talking about a 'spacex rocket package' for a roadster - 1 cnn article comparing rocket thrusts - 1 redundant wiki page ----------- That was literally the first thing I searched for and I think DDG is clearly better there, though both overall results are quite poor. One big thing is a much better diversity of sources with much less redundancy. But the thing that really pushes this example over the edge is the spaceflight101. It not only provides the most relevant information by a rather wide margin, but is also a critical source for a wide array of related news, specs, and other information. The reason I think both searches are quite poor is because of how much all search engines today lack any notion of context whatsoever. When I search for 'spacex engine thrust' am I searching for technical information, or am I searching for media information relating to recent launches or developments? That's something that ought be able derived from a contextual analysis of my query, yet nonetheless it quite obviously is not! Google took us that big leap from 'Abraham Lincoln' not returning hardcore porn, but it feels like the progress we've made since then has been pretty.. meh. And I feel the last few years have seen an overall decline in search quality, but a relative increase in quality for the formerly secondary players such as DDG. In other words it "feels" as though Google of ~4 years ago > DDG today > Google Today. But of course this is, in some ways, going to come down to the person.
      - crispinb 7y ago
        No I don't have examples to hand. Search isn't something I'm interested in really - it's just a kind of commodity to me that I want to get out of my way. The trend is entirely clear for my search usage though - I just don't find what I'm looking for much of the time with DDG, so end up g!'ing. When that usage reaches a certain subjective redundancy threshhold I switch back to google.
rjf72 7y ago
Hacker News has a pretty cool archive feature. I'm certain if you go back about a decade you'd see a similar response on anything regarding Internet Explorer. It was the most dominant browser, by a wide margin, even when there were browsers many felt had long since improved beyond Internet Explorer. And those alternatives came from companies that didn't have the reputational issues of Microsoft, somewhat ironically Google was one of them. Yet today it's become the same thing with Google. They had a phenomenal search engine, but it's gradually gotten worse while other engines have taken some big strides forward. Its marketshare is just completely out of wack with its capability, and so I think that motivates people pretty strongly since it indicates a knowledge gap in the market. This is also a pretty new thing which further adds motivation - a few years ago Google search was, without doubt, king. Now, it's not. And, again similar to Microsoft, Google is increasingly destroying its reputation so it feels good to swap, let alone when other services are now also arguably superior! To see some degree of evidence of this look at posts related to Google, but not their search. Posted just today (so there's going to be a large overlap in users) was this [1] post where a sunken car (found to contain a corpse) was visible via Google Maps. Nobody decrying Google Maps because it's still the clearly best service for satellite/street imagery. Gotta give the devil his due. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20954545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20954545
xxxpupugo 7y ago
Yep. Not sure what do these questions try to go after...If Google stops being useful, just quit using it. Apparently, Google's search algorithm is one of the most hidden secret in the world, and has insanely complex evaluation mechanism in place, any anecdote feedback is not going to cause a ripple in shaping this algorithm.
la_barba 7y ago
People have been bashing MS, Apple for decades (for the same tired reasons), and now FB, Google too. What is wrong in expressing displeasure? Its a normal human trait to do so. If you wrong someone enough times, they're going to spend their own free time and energy telling people how much they dislike you. I suppose taken to an extreme, it might become unhealthy. To be clear, I don't like Google any more, and I'd be happy if more and more people stopped liking them too. An advertising/data-mining/surveillance company controlling access to information in a digital age is about as dangerous as you can get. Even so, I can still objectively praise some interesting cool tech that they produce...
- outime 7y ago
  I expect to get interesting and hopefully new insights when reading comments in HN. The comment guidelines state the following: >Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. Hence I believe repeating the same comment (or should be called rhetorical question) in almost every Google Search (or related e.g. DDG) thread isn't only repetitive but IMHO also goes against the quoted guideline.
concordDance 7y ago
Raising awareness of what was lost in my case. I miss the early 2000s when I'd do a search for things and get information heavy, presentation light content made by non-commercial enthusiasts. Though in my case I mostly don't blame Google as much as the commercialization of the internet and the short attention spans of the majority of its current inhabitants (who are a lot less bright and technical than the ones from the late 90s and early 2000s). What I do blame them for a bit is catering to those masses and their commercial focus rather than trying to improve the quality and depth of information we are exposed to. (I can probably also blame them for some of the censorship they seem to do based on these guidelines)

by outime 7y ago

MiroF 7y ago

1. This is a big community and I haven't noticed this in every thread. 2. Google hasn't changed - so until they do, I suspect they will continue to be criticized. People generally will continuously criticize things that continuously screw them over.

andrewvc 7y ago

Yes, people have been switching to DDG for years now, yet still google is utterly dominant. Candidly, I'm mystified by the complaints. Google's search works great, and has for years for myself and everyone I know IRL. Any post about any product that isn't brand new on HN is going to get comments along the line of "Company X? Their product is garbage, it used to be great! I've been using <alternative that requires a ton of extra effort to setup> and once I got it going it was amazing!"

snazz 7y ago
I won’t argue about your experience, but DDG isn’t any harder to use than Google aside from the fact that you need to change your default search engine. That’s not a “ton of extra effort to setup”.
- crispinb 7y ago
  When trying DDG again for a while, my use of g! gradually increases as a necessary tactic to surface what I'm looking for. When it gets to over about 80% I go back to using Google again with a sigh.
  - rjf72 7y ago
    Can you give some examples? I think a few years ago this was somewhat reasonable but in my opinion DDG has not only matched but surpassed Google for most searches. As an example (to not make this as if I'm only asking you to do the lifting) a random search that's relevant for me would be 'spacex rocket thrust.' Since Google's results are based on arbitrary tracking and whatever per user magic marketing metrics they decide to apply, it's not repeatable but I imagine you'll probably get at least something similar. We should get identical results for DDG: ----------- Google: - 4 redundant wiki pages (all link to each other) - 2 redundant links to spacex.com site (all link to each other) - 1 irrelevant theverge article on an arbitrary launch - 1 space.com link with some relevant information DDG: - 1 relevant wiki page - 2 redundant links to spacex.com site - 1 tangential article from space.com - 1 space.com link with some relevant information - 1 spaceflight101.com link with extremely relevant information - 1 irrelevant link from teslarati talking about a 'spacex rocket package' for a roadster - 1 cnn article comparing rocket thrusts - 1 redundant wiki page ----------- That was literally the first thing I searched for and I think DDG is clearly better there, though both overall results are quite poor. One big thing is a much better diversity of sources with much less redundancy. But the thing that really pushes this example over the edge is the spaceflight101. It not only provides the most relevant information by a rather wide margin, but is also a critical source for a wide array of related news, specs, and other information. The reason I think both searches are quite poor is because of how much all search engines today lack any notion of context whatsoever. When I search for 'spacex engine thrust' am I searching for technical information, or am I searching for media information relating to recent launches or developments? That's something that ought be able derived from a contextual analysis of my query, yet nonetheless it quite obviously is not! Google took us that big leap from 'Abraham Lincoln' not returning hardcore porn, but it feels like the progress we've made since then has been pretty.. meh. And I feel the last few years have seen an overall decline in search quality, but a relative increase in quality for the formerly secondary players such as DDG. In other words it "feels" as though Google of ~4 years ago > DDG today > Google Today. But of course this is, in some ways, going to come down to the person.
    - crispinb 7y ago
      No I don't have examples to hand. Search isn't something I'm interested in really - it's just a kind of commodity to me that I want to get out of my way. The trend is entirely clear for my search usage though - I just don't find what I'm looking for much of the time with DDG, so end up g!'ing. When that usage reaches a certain subjective redundancy threshhold I switch back to google.

rjf72 7y ago

Hacker News has a pretty cool archive feature. I'm certain if you go back about a decade you'd see a similar response on anything regarding Internet Explorer. It was the most dominant browser, by a wide margin, even when there were browsers many felt had long since improved beyond Internet Explorer. And those alternatives came from companies that didn't have the reputational issues of Microsoft, somewhat ironically Google was one of them. Yet today it's become the same thing with Google. They had a phenomenal search engine, but it's gradually gotten worse while other engines have taken some big strides forward. Its marketshare is just completely out of wack with its capability, and so I think that motivates people pretty strongly since it indicates a knowledge gap in the market. This is also a pretty new thing which further adds motivation - a few years ago Google search was, without doubt, king. Now, it's not. And, again similar to Microsoft, Google is increasingly destroying its reputation so it feels good to swap, let alone when other services are now also arguably superior! To see some degree of evidence of this look at posts related to Google, but not their search. Posted just today (so there's going to be a large overlap in users) was this [1] post where a sunken car (found to contain a corpse) was visible via Google Maps. Nobody decrying Google Maps because it's still the clearly best service for satellite/street imagery. Gotta give the devil his due. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20954545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20954545

xxxpupugo 7y ago

Yep. Not sure what do these questions try to go after...If Google stops being useful, just quit using it. Apparently, Google's search algorithm is one of the most hidden secret in the world, and has insanely complex evaluation mechanism in place, any anecdote feedback is not going to cause a ripple in shaping this algorithm.

la_barba 7y ago

People have been bashing MS, Apple for decades (for the same tired reasons), and now FB, Google too. What is wrong in expressing displeasure? Its a normal human trait to do so. If you wrong someone enough times, they're going to spend their own free time and energy telling people how much they dislike you. I suppose taken to an extreme, it might become unhealthy. To be clear, I don't like Google any more, and I'd be happy if more and more people stopped liking them too. An advertising/data-mining/surveillance company controlling access to information in a digital age is about as dangerous as you can get. Even so, I can still objectively praise some interesting cool tech that they produce...

outime 7y ago
I expect to get interesting and hopefully new insights when reading comments in HN. The comment guidelines state the following: >Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. Hence I believe repeating the same comment (or should be called rhetorical question) in almost every Google Search (or related e.g. DDG) thread isn't only repetitive but IMHO also goes against the quoted guideline.

concordDance 7y ago

Raising awareness of what was lost in my case. I miss the early 2000s when I'd do a search for things and get information heavy, presentation light content made by non-commercial enthusiasts. Though in my case I mostly don't blame Google as much as the commercialization of the internet and the short attention spans of the majority of its current inhabitants (who are a lot less bright and technical than the ones from the late 90s and early 2000s). What I do blame them for a bit is catering to those masses and their commercial focus rather than trying to improve the quality and depth of information we are exposed to. (I can probably also blame them for some of the censorship they seem to do based on these guidelines)