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This is not about lowering standards, Sam. This is about expectations (and indeed, bullshit on blogs - hence the article title). The one problem search has righ

This is not about lowering standards, Sam. This is about expectations (and indeed, bullshit on blogs - hence the article title). The one problem search has right now are content farms - like the guys who were scrapping off sites like Stackoverflow, which certainly bit many of us here by bringing actually good results down -, but that isn't to say that "search sucks". There absolutely needs to be a solution to spam and gaming search results. That being said, the article is indeed not more about search than it is about crap supposed-high-profile blogging. Mike doesn't highlight the problems with search, doesn't mention possible solutions. He talks about Google being in shaky ground because people are paying attention to bing and other competitors. I think that's crap.

SamReidHughes 16y ago
The thing is, it is fair to say that search sucks. Many times it's impossible to find what you're looking for. Even the desperate tricks like including the word "forums" in the search don't always work any more. And the post does highlight the problem with search (which is that it sucks). As for possible solutions, that's a hard problem. You can't say that Arrington needs to mention possible solutions, is he going to suggest that they invent some kind of algorithm? It is fair to point out that specialized tools are more useful (and maybe that future search engines will need to be built around these).
- fredoliveira 16y ago
  You can extend that argument to "x sucks", then, where x can be virtually anything we know - since it is valid to say something sucks without mentioning why, or how it could be better (because he doesn't need to publish an algorithm indeed, but what good is saying something is bad if you don't even know how it could improve?)
  - SamReidHughes 16y ago
    Absolutely. Which is fine. For example, in this case, I hadn't thought about the quality of Google's search results and how they are doing. This has brought the matter to my attention and now I have a different perspective on the future of search engines.
- pessimist 16y ago
  Google does support searching only discussions, you can find this on the left column (sometimes hidden under "more").

SamReidHughes 16y ago

The thing is, it is fair to say that search sucks. Many times it's impossible to find what you're looking for. Even the desperate tricks like including the word "forums" in the search don't always work any more. And the post does highlight the problem with search (which is that it sucks). As for possible solutions, that's a hard problem. You can't say that Arrington needs to mention possible solutions, is he going to suggest that they invent some kind of algorithm? It is fair to point out that specialized tools are more useful (and maybe that future search engines will need to be built around these).

fredoliveira 16y ago
You can extend that argument to "x sucks", then, where x can be virtually anything we know - since it is valid to say something sucks without mentioning why, or how it could be better (because he doesn't need to publish an algorithm indeed, but what good is saying something is bad if you don't even know how it could improve?)
- SamReidHughes 16y ago
  Absolutely. Which is fine. For example, in this case, I hadn't thought about the quality of Google's search results and how they are doing. This has brought the matter to my attention and now I have a different perspective on the future of search engines.
pessimist 16y ago
Google does support searching only discussions, you can find this on the left column (sometimes hidden under "more").