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Many of them save me extra clicks which is convenient. Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. I will get

by chimen 6y ago

Many of them save me extra clicks which is convenient. Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. I will get mad when those products have better alternatives but it's not the case. Build better alternatives and I'm on board. In the end, Google is a business - I would promote my own shit on the first vertical as well. One thing that pisses me off is the AMP ordeal but, other than that, I extract value from Google. I am on Google to find results to my questions - I want the quickest exit and that's what they provide. If they fail to do that they back down trust me, these guys watch "the numbers" carefully.

kevingadd 6y ago
"I will get mad when those products have better alternatives but it's not the case. Build better alternatives and I'm on board." How will you find out about the better alternatives? Are you certain there aren't good alternatives to translate, maps, flights, shopping etc? For any language? I know for a fact that google translate is bad for some ideographic languages and as a result there are competing services that companies have started to use instead (DeepL, etc). If the competition is better, how will you know? Are you going to dedicate time to hunting down alternatives and testing them out when the Google product is the only thing on screen and it works?
- sidibe 6y ago
  Someone will mention better alternatives here, after all I've been hearing about how ddg blows Google out of the water a couple times every week here for years.
  - kevingadd 6y ago
    Generally speaking, HN posters are not the people who are going to be harmed by anti-competitive behavior or Google filling the first screen of results with their own products. It's ordinary people who use the web. You could probably argue that ordinary people don't care about quality and they're best served by using the vertically-integrated Google product, though...
  - breakfastduck 6y ago
    Ddg is acceptable but it doesn’t blow Google out of the water at all. It’s miles ahead for me because of tracking etc, but I can’t see how anyone could think the actual search results are better
    - zentiggr 6y ago
      Every time in the last couple of years that DDG hasn't had a decent result, and I've used '!g' to see what else might come up, I've been very disappointed... usually a grab bag of crap sites with barely any relevance to my original search direction. We probably have very different searches.
  - wolco 6y ago
    What about translation tools or maps. Hear of any good ones on here?
  - aeurielesn 6y ago
    I may be an outlier but I haven't had a good experience with DDG for a while. I don't really feel like I would recommend it.
  - chris_f 6y ago
    As DDG was mentioned, feel free to come check out Runnaroo. Similar to Startpage, the base for organic web results is Google, but it also includes additional vertical sources layered in to provide greater relevance. It also respects literal searches with quotation marks, which is a common gripe on HN. Still very new, but improving and growing rapidly. Example search for React.js - https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=react.js https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=react.js Existing monetization comes from the new Web Monetization API [0] standard (through Coil members) and as part of the Brave publisher program. [0] https://webmonetization.org/ https://webmonetization.org/
    - 1_player 6y ago
      Thanks for the heads up. I did some quick tests and it’s much better than DDG and 2020 Google, at least for my use case.
- chimen 6y ago
  I am constantly trying new things. I just ditched duckduck go for the third time. I'm using firefox since 2 months. I am aware of alternatives. I WANT to ditch Google too but I get value from it atm that I cannot find elsewhere.
  - dybber 6y ago
    How would you bootstrap such a company? The solution as I see it is to forcefully break-up Google, such that these services can have their run as independent companies (Maps, flight search, product price comparison, etc.). This has been done before with big companies (e.g. break of Bell Systems into 7 companies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System)
    - TomMarius 6y ago
      And what good came out of the remains of Bell Systems afterwards?
    - kartayyar 6y ago
      The way Google: ship it and make it work really, really well. The product was so good that people noticed. They were able to take this and leverage this into being search for a really large property, like Back in the 90s there were lots of search engines. People didn't pick Google because it was hard to switch, they converged on Google because the product was that good - there was Infoseek, HotBot, AskJeeves, Alta Vista, Lycos, Yahoo, Excite ... the list goes on. It's a theoretical problem to have a significantly better search engine and not find users for it.
      - kevingadd 6y ago
        I'd argue that Google was able to win specifically because they had so much competition. They weren't fighting against one or two massive entrenched competitors in an established space. Search was still pretty new at that point and Google's approach to it was innovative. Google also had lots of space to improve on its competition when it came to metrics like latency, which paid off. Nobody really has the option to beat them on latency now. That's not really Unfair in any fashion but it is an example of how it would be much harder to dethrone the ruling search engine in 2020.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  I think you're overselling your point here. if I search "maps" in google, the google product is the first hit, but several major alternatives are right under it on the first page of results. FWIW, DeepL is also on the first page for "translate". I don't actually want to discover new products by finding their homepages in my search results. when I am looking for something new, I want to read a review in a publication I trust or at least a discussion among real humans in a forum.
  - kevingadd 6y ago
    If you search for "route to <city>" on Google, you get a Google Maps embed with directions above search results from services like mapquest. That's what I'm referring to. (Do many people find mapping services by searching that way now? I don't know.)
- osdiab 6y ago
  It's mostly been word of mouth for me - Japanese friends telling me DeepL is way better for Japanese, people on HN complaining about Google Chrome performance vs Firefox. And competitors are coming pretty close to other Google stuff, Apple Maps is actually getting pretty good for me right now but mainly lacks the metadata about things like restaurant menus + the flexibility of routing like cheapest train fares or searching by last train and what not that Google has - honestly seems like low hanging fruit. Nobody gets close on search yet though, I've tried and failed to stick with DDG many times now.
asfasfasf12 6y ago
DeepL is better than google translate.
- chimen 6y ago
  Just tested and tried translating English to romanian (my language) - doesn't exist :)
  - onionisafruit 6y ago
    What I gather from this is DeepL has far fewer inaccurate translations from English to Romanian.
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      My translation service from /dev/null is even better than these two services. Not a single false translation. Guaranteed!
matsemann 6y ago
How would a better alternative surface?
- chimen 6y ago
  Here, on ProductHunt and any other way. How did Firefox re-invent itself? It attacked the very thing that Google could not provide: privacy. How is DDG on such a good trend lately? It requires a lot of effort I agree but google also put a lot of effort into their own products.
  - boogies 6y ago
    Google puts in some effort, but if it doesn't work they just purloin others’ products. See the Yelp story in the leaked FTC documents the article linked: http://graphics.wsj.com/google-ftc-report/ http://graphics.wsj.com/google-ftc-report/
xwdv 6y ago
Some would say maybe the little startups should have a chance.
- jagged-chisel 6y ago
  Then they have to start by building a better product. Any suggestions for alternative services that outperform Google’s?
  - xwdv 6y ago
    Alternatives? No. Fuck little startups, most of them hawk bullshit and don't get interesting until they grow into big companies. A startup won't compete well with Google for very long and using one instead of Google feels too much like pandering to a novelty.
    - JadeNB 6y ago
      > Fuck little startups, most of them hawk bullshit and don't get interesting until they grow into big companies. Surely you don't mean that it's the act of growing into a big company that makes them interesting, but rather that only the interesting ones make it to big companies. (I don't think I necessarily agree with that—I'd think amount of capital is a far bigger determinant—and I would notice that the converse is far from true.) Well, there's nothing wrong with sitting back and letting the market make the decision—but if someone's not there trying the little companies before they get big, then that's a market decision in its own right. > A startup won't compete well with Google for very long and using one instead of Google feels too much like pandering to a novelty. Or, perhaps, taking a stance on a matter of principle, about privacy, or about Google's monopoly powers, or, well, pick your poison.
  - boogies 6y ago
    > Any suggestions for alternative services that outperform Google’s? Yes. Which one? This page seems full of people recommending DeepL, which is one I can personally recommend for Spanish, and others can swear by for any of the languages it supports. OpenStreetMap is great for more detailed and more frequently updated map data. The article shows how pathetic multiple competitors make Google Flights look https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/07/28/google-search-results-prioritize-google-products-over-competitors#competing-with-advertisers https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/07/28/google-sea... (and it seems the industry rate 10+ other services above it https://www.frommers.com/slideshows/848046-the-10-best-and-worst-airfare-search-sites https://www.frommers.com/slideshows/848046-the-10-best-and-w...). DuckDuckGo's search results are as good for me (not everyone), and it invented the instant answer (IIRC), has 2 click dark mode, bangs and other features, and is a good place to find more alternatives.
Slartie 6y ago
Actually, on text translations, DeepL nowadays outclasses Google Translate IMHO. The only downside is that they don't appear to offer some kind of transparent website translate feature ("put a URL in and it translates the entire site, with layout kept intact"), at least not for free. But if I happen to have a paragraph or so in some foreign language and want that translated to some language I can understand, DeepL has become my first stop due to its consistently higher result quality.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- vinay427 6y ago
  I would be prepared to switch over completely for the languages they support if DeepL didn't insert their advertisement at the bottom of some results (I've had this accidentally included in an email before), and if they had a mobile app with a text selection action on Android to highlight text and see a popup with the translation. As it is, I use it most of the time but still rely on Google Translate being more accessible. Obviously DeepL is newer, so these limitations are understandable.
  - abdusco 6y ago
    > if they had a mobile app with a text selection action on Android to highlight text and see a popup with the translation I've had the same frustration, so I've written a simple script/app with Tasker (and AutoShare plugin) to select text and translate from DE -> EN. I use it quite frequently to learn German.
  - hombre_fatal 6y ago
    One weird quirk of DeepL is that when you become a $5/mo subscriber, you can't use their free /translator page while logged in.
- bobsoap 6y ago
  Same here, I've been consistently surprised at how much better (and more natural/accurate) deepl is than google at translating, especially for sentences and paragraphs.
pgrote 6y ago
I am the product. I understand this with google and accept it. They can extract whatever information they want in exchange for decent results when I search whether it comes from them or not. I get gmail, a phone os, a browser, an os, remote desktop and more for free from them. I pay for youtube premium. The value I get from google is worth it. Everything they provide is good enough and when I want a third party site or information I can get it. As a consumer, Google offers a great deal. There are two pain points with google. The first is support, but what can you do when it is free. The second is the rollout of new products and then abandoning them. I do not run a business that is affected by Google's decisions, though. I understand if you are a company competing in an area google participates it is unfair.
- andrepd 6y ago
  The bitch is when you're forced to use their products whether you like it or not. Case in point recaptcha. Also many users are not in the least aware of the trade going on, and the magnitude and invasiveness of the surveillance.
  - vntok 6y ago
    Google does not force companies to implement ReCaptcha on their own Web properties.
    - john-shaffer 6y ago
      Many government websites use reCAPTCHA. I do not have any choice in using it. If I were to block Google to avoid tracking, I could not function in society.
      - reaperducer 6y ago
        I had to use a reCAPTCHA on a government web site last week, and Google's stupid AI refused to accept that a picture of a wheelchair is not a bicycle. They both have spokes, so I must be a bot. Note to self: Never get in a vehicle steered by Google AI.
athenot 6y ago
The thing is, increasingly I'm catching it returning wrong answers. A few days I was looking up the approximate weight of a cup of flour to do a recipe conversion, and the "helpful answer" was pulled from some random site and was about 15% off-base compared to the median from a handful of other sites, including from flour companies. I've observed similar bad results when looking up information about medications… I feel bad for those acting on that information. Just like ads, I've learned to tune out that top part of the search result page. Honestly, the increasing noise feels a lot like Yahoo! in 2001.
- leeoniya 6y ago
  i run into this so often it might as well be called misinformation. it will surface parts of 2 different sentances which completely changes the meaning or context, or removes important nuance.
- edoceo 6y ago
  Well, one cup (volume) of flour can vary pretty widely in weight (108-138g in my notebook). Bleached, whole, Rye, AP, etc and even same type across brands. A variance of 15% is not too odd from my baking experience.
  - jdashg 6y ago
    Yeah that's flour's perennial problem, and 15% is enough to really throw a bake off. Avoid any baking recipe that doesn't have a nice round number for grams of flour, and even then be suspicious. (baker's percents are always welcome though!)
    - edoceo 6y ago
      A professional baker who's business I spent some time getting to know would test bake a standard loaf from every batch of flour purchased. Their recipe would get micro adjustment depending on results. Not as necessary for home baked 1kg loafs.
  - Jasper_ 6y ago
torgoguys 6y ago
>“We want to get you out of Google and to the right place as fast as possible,” co-founder Larry Page said in 2004. The article presents you as some sort of "gotcha" quote demonstrating how Google overturned a core value or something. Yes, Google search results have changed, but what it is now is very much in the spirit of that original value. I searched for something. Google gave me the answer directly. Boom, I'm done. Get in, get the answer fast, get out. I can go back to my life.
- zentiggr 6y ago
  And who gives a crap about the livelihoods of the sources Google pulled that info from and now will never see your traffic. You think Google did all the original research and information creation to populate their answers? And since when do they provide decent attribution and link-throughs to the sources they used, so you can check their graph? Or do you really trust Google's automation of everything to generate accurate results every time?
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    It’s the same thing as with ads and ad blocking, etc: your business model is not my problem.
    - calcifer 6y ago
      Well, let's just hope your business model doesn't get co-opted by a giant company one day. That would be horrible.
      - renewiltord 6y ago
        If it does, my business dies. That's life. My problem to solve.
hrktb 6y ago
> Many of them save me extra clicks which is convenient. I think the point is that some are convenient, others aren’t, but they all have prominent positioning. Google is not the best flight search service, yet it’s on top. As you say, it wouldn’t matter if Google was the best at everything all the time. The issue is that of course it isn’t, and will never be.
- andrepd 6y ago
  Out of curiosity which flight search is better than flights.google?
  - input_sh 6y ago
    Momondo, Skyscanner, TripAdvisor, Expedia.
    - gfxgirl 6y ago
      Those are all scammy sights covered in ads and tracking by 30-60 ad companies. I prefer to be tracked by just one and not served ads
      - hrktb 6y ago
        It’s a valid point, but also feels like Stockholm Syndrome in a way. Why not accept our abuser, if they protect us from everyone else also trying to abuse us ?
      - zentiggr 6y ago
        Use an adblocker _and_ visits sites that are more likely to show you a full selection of flight info and the actual lowest fares?
    - vultour 6y ago
      How is any of those better than Google Flights?
  - s3r3nity 6y ago
boogies 6y ago
> Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. This is patently false, and probably a reflection of the Google bubble you live in. DeepL is pretty objectively superior to Google, as evaluated by journalists who natively speak the languages it translates in the articles linked on their website. You can find plenty of in depth reviews online, and every one I've read has admitted that it's at absolute worst as bad as Google Translate. Edit: https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/29/deepl-schools-other-online-translators-with-clever-machine-learning/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/29/deepl-schools-other-online... Maps is a different story, but there are certainly better options for certain specific needs. I'd like to see the noise-pollution based routing service on HN's frontpage yesterday remade with Google Maps. Search is somewhat subjective, but I haven't used Google Search in several years and I don't consider an engine that requires me to scroll past page after page of ads — including what amount to ads for services like Google's inferior flight service, that won't necessarily be easily removed by an "out of the box" ad blocker — high quality. And those are the services you picked. The article has a great little analysis of Google Flights and why "It did not crack the top 10 of Frommer’s 2020 ranking of airfare search engines, for instance" and why the FTC's leaked documents called it out for providing less options. (Spoiler: Up to 80% more expensive flights, when it found flights at all).
- pydry 6y ago
  I've found plenty of situations where OSM has better data than Google Maps.
  - boogies 6y ago
    Absolutely, eg. the woods near my house have trails mapped out in OSM that don't exist on Google Maps.
    - iggldiggl 6y ago
      I also find Google's colour scheme rather obnoxious when I want to use the map to actually orient myself (instead of it being merely a convenient geographical background for displaying POIs and route planning) – forests aren't displayed at all once you start zooming in and the distinction between built-up areas and open space (which isn't great to start with) gets more and more indistinct as well.
hnlmorg 6y ago
> Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. There certainly did used to be competition to Google Translate but Google crushed them by promoting their own services (which came later)[1]. I often see the argument made that these monopolies just happen to have the best software but often those arguments miss how those monopolies had already killed the competition and were now suffocating the market so new competition struggles to rise. This was a common tactic by Microsoft in the 90s too, so it's by no means unique to Google. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babel_Fish_(website) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babel_Fish_(website)
- ViViDboarder 6y ago
  Exactly. We can see that in the future for the examples from the article too. When Google started promoting Google Flights and Hotels over other sites, they did not offer close to the best information. In fact, as the article claims, they still don’t. Yet despite that competitors are losing traffic and going out of business (eg. Hipmunk). It’s not hard to see where this leads over time. The competitors struggle to stay in business or even get the traffic needed to improve their products while Google gets to keep investing and iterating. Maybe in 5-10 years they’ll have a product better than the existing ones, but they’ll also have driven most competitors to obscurity.
  - gfxgirl 6y ago
    not my experience. The experience at Google Fllghts is 100x better than any other flight search service. It's like the difference between Google Maps when it shipped and Mapquest. Mapquest was instantly a joke with its server side rendered pages. Google Flights is fast. Every other site is slow.
    - ViViDboarder 6y ago
      If you read the article they highlight the fact that they omit routes and prices at times that can be found on IATA. For me, speed is one factor of product quality, but result integrity is the thing that I care the most about.
JadeNB 6y ago
> Many of them save me extra clicks which is convenient. Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. … Build better alternatives and I'm on board. This is why they don't have better competitors. To compete with Google, you have to, out of the gate, and with them as mediators, match or exceed on every aspect of their experience a company that, from the perspective of just about any competitor out there, has just about unlimited resources. If you do start to make it and gain some traction—again, necessarily often through Google's own services—it is well within Google's power to focus on you specifically, say, by snooping on your data on an Android phone, and make sure to drive you out of the market.
birksherty 6y ago
I agree. The reason I still use google is most of the times I don't have to open another website to get my answers. I don't have to load the slow javascript heavy sites and saves me time. Google is not just links to websites but also serves information directly. Obviously if I need better understanding and deep knowledge I open the links, but I don't need that often.
hbharadwaj 6y ago
Edge Chromium has Microsoft Translate which does a pretty good job as well
wmeredith 6y ago
When a better one comes along ... you'll never know.
onion2k 6y ago
Build better alternatives and I'm on board. In the end, Google is a business - I would promote my own shit on the first vertical as well. You: I wish people would build products that successfully compete with Google. Also you: It's fine if Google do things that stop their competitors successfully competing with Google. This is literally exactly the reason why anti-trust laws exist - to stop a company who are successful in one area (search, advertising) unfairly dominating other areas (maps, translation) by suppressing their competition. For all you know there might be a map provider that you'd prefer - but while Google leverage their advantage running the premier search engine to put themselves at the top of every geographic search you're never going to find out.
- Mirioron 6y ago
  But if Google search didn't send me to Google maps when I was looking for maps then I would explicitly go to Google maps. In that case there would be no chance for any competitor to do better.
  - ksk 6y ago
    And how does one know that Google even has a maps service to go to? Google maps didn't start out great or even good (Its pretty good now). Google promotes their beta-level products over other mature products to the point the competition is starved of visitors, while Google iterates their own product. So now, after the fact, you can go "Well, there's no one else, I guess Google does the right thing in showing me Google maps as the first result".
    - elpool2 6y ago
      It was a while ago, but I remember Google maps being far better than any other map service when it first launched.
      - reaperducer 6y ago
        The reason Google Maps was successful in its early days wasn't because of its quality, it was because it was free. The other options were just as good, but often you had to pay for them. With Google, you could repeatedly refine the bad results until you found something useful, because there was zero additional cost involved.
ksk 6y ago
Data based algorithms can only get better when you feed them data. Google makes sure that the data only goes to their own algorithms. Its a chicken and egg situation IMHO.
dvduval 6y ago
There are some great translation tools besides Google translate. I find Microsoft translate sometimes outperforms Google translate for certain languages. For example Google doesn't even have Cantonese. And there are some translation apps coming out of China that are also really awesome. I can't speak for other languages. I just wanted to point out that Google putting themselves first in the results is not always an indicator that it is the best results.
lhorie 6y ago
> Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. I will get mad when those products have better alternatives but it's not the case. Just think about it: where do you think the money to fund development of maps, translation etc comes from? Nobody pays a dime to use these services, so they clearly aren't self-sustaining. Now think about your own income. Imagine google comes up with some way to provide the same skillset you offer by pouring ad money into researching some hypothetical singularity AI or whatever, and then offering that to your employers for free (in exchange for ad placement in your company's end product), causing you to lose not only your job, but your ability to get any related jobs anywhere. That's obviously an extreme and highly hypothetical scenario, but it illustrates what anti-trust laws are supposed to stop.
tenebrisalietum 6y ago
> search There was a recent HN post about the declining quality of Google search in that most search results seem to be more and more leading to SEO spam. Is your experience with Google Search different?
simonkafan 6y ago
You write this like its a fact but it's just your opinion. Deepl.com for example is on par and imho even better than Google Translate for some languages.
jaggirs 6y ago
Then you should get mad, because there are better alternatives to google translate (deepl).
el-salvador 6y ago
It depends on the country. Naver has super detailed maps of Korea. Yandex Street View image quality is great in Russia.
wazoox 6y ago
Deepl crushes Google Translate in quality. Depending upon your needs (bike, anyone? -> https://cycle.travel https://cycle.travel - minimal gas consumption? try https://maps.openrouteservice.org/ https://maps.openrouteservice.org/ ) there are better alternatives to Google Maps. DuckDuckGo is much less annoying than Google and for a few years arguably as good.
vbezhenar 6y ago
Deepl works better than translate. Yandex and 2Gis works better than Google maps for my region. Google search is superb, can't really argue with that.
chris92de 6y ago
> Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. At least for Translate I can wholeheartedly recommend DeepL as competitor. Does it lack languages? Sure, but the quality of translations seem subjectively better than that of Google Translate - especially for longer texts.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
This is a very typical response on HN in response to articles/blog posts about issues raised by the Google business. When these sort of comments rise to the top of HN threads, I am at a loss how to interpret the meaning. 1. Does it mean the commenter and HN voters do not care about the issue (e.g., anti-competitive behaviour)? or 2. Does it mean they normally would care about anti-competitive behaviour but because they "like" this particular company they do not care? If the commenter means #2, then it seems like there are some assumptions being made. For example, one assumption might be that if Google is held accountable for anti-competitive behaviour then it will affect the commenter's "web user experience". However, I cannot see how to arrive at that conclusion. In fact, the commenter states "Build better alternatives and I'm on board." What if anti-competitive behaviour was an impediment to others seeking to "[b]uild better alternatives"? If holding Google to account for anti-competitive behaviour would remove such impediments, then it seems that the commenter is more likely to mean #1. The commenter appears to desire the most convenient and quick "service" he/she can get, and is impartial to who provides it. He/she acknowledges that others could build better alternatives to Google. If holding Google accountable for its conduct helps others build better alternatives, this would meet the commenter's needs. Without further clarification from the commenter, I am going to assume that #1 better represents his/her meaning.

by chimen 6y ago

kevingadd 6y ago

"I will get mad when those products have better alternatives but it's not the case. Build better alternatives and I'm on board." How will you find out about the better alternatives? Are you certain there aren't good alternatives to translate, maps, flights, shopping etc? For any language? I know for a fact that google translate is bad for some ideographic languages and as a result there are competing services that companies have started to use instead (DeepL, etc). If the competition is better, how will you know? Are you going to dedicate time to hunting down alternatives and testing them out when the Google product is the only thing on screen and it works?

sidibe 6y ago
Someone will mention better alternatives here, after all I've been hearing about how ddg blows Google out of the water a couple times every week here for years.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  Generally speaking, HN posters are not the people who are going to be harmed by anti-competitive behavior or Google filling the first screen of results with their own products. It's ordinary people who use the web. You could probably argue that ordinary people don't care about quality and they're best served by using the vertically-integrated Google product, though...
- breakfastduck 6y ago
  Ddg is acceptable but it doesn’t blow Google out of the water at all. It’s miles ahead for me because of tracking etc, but I can’t see how anyone could think the actual search results are better
  - zentiggr 6y ago
    Every time in the last couple of years that DDG hasn't had a decent result, and I've used '!g' to see what else might come up, I've been very disappointed... usually a grab bag of crap sites with barely any relevance to my original search direction. We probably have very different searches.
- wolco 6y ago
  What about translation tools or maps. Hear of any good ones on here?
- aeurielesn 6y ago
  I may be an outlier but I haven't had a good experience with DDG for a while. I don't really feel like I would recommend it.
- chris_f 6y ago
  As DDG was mentioned, feel free to come check out Runnaroo. Similar to Startpage, the base for organic web results is Google, but it also includes additional vertical sources layered in to provide greater relevance. It also respects literal searches with quotation marks, which is a common gripe on HN. Still very new, but improving and growing rapidly. Example search for React.js - https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=react.js https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=react.js Existing monetization comes from the new Web Monetization API [0] standard (through Coil members) and as part of the Brave publisher program. [0] https://webmonetization.org/ https://webmonetization.org/
  - 1_player 6y ago
    Thanks for the heads up. I did some quick tests and it’s much better than DDG and 2020 Google, at least for my use case.
chimen 6y ago
I am constantly trying new things. I just ditched duckduck go for the third time. I'm using firefox since 2 months. I am aware of alternatives. I WANT to ditch Google too but I get value from it atm that I cannot find elsewhere.
- dybber 6y ago
  How would you bootstrap such a company? The solution as I see it is to forcefully break-up Google, such that these services can have their run as independent companies (Maps, flight search, product price comparison, etc.). This has been done before with big companies (e.g. break of Bell Systems into 7 companies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System)
  - TomMarius 6y ago
    And what good came out of the remains of Bell Systems afterwards?
  - kartayyar 6y ago
    The way Google: ship it and make it work really, really well. The product was so good that people noticed. They were able to take this and leverage this into being search for a really large property, like Back in the 90s there were lots of search engines. People didn't pick Google because it was hard to switch, they converged on Google because the product was that good - there was Infoseek, HotBot, AskJeeves, Alta Vista, Lycos, Yahoo, Excite ... the list goes on. It's a theoretical problem to have a significantly better search engine and not find users for it.
    - kevingadd 6y ago
      I'd argue that Google was able to win specifically because they had so much competition. They weren't fighting against one or two massive entrenched competitors in an established space. Search was still pretty new at that point and Google's approach to it was innovative. Google also had lots of space to improve on its competition when it came to metrics like latency, which paid off. Nobody really has the option to beat them on latency now. That's not really Unfair in any fashion but it is an example of how it would be much harder to dethrone the ruling search engine in 2020.
leetcrew 6y ago
I think you're overselling your point here. if I search "maps" in google, the google product is the first hit, but several major alternatives are right under it on the first page of results. FWIW, DeepL is also on the first page for "translate". I don't actually want to discover new products by finding their homepages in my search results. when I am looking for something new, I want to read a review in a publication I trust or at least a discussion among real humans in a forum.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  If you search for "route to <city>" on Google, you get a Google Maps embed with directions above search results from services like mapquest. That's what I'm referring to. (Do many people find mapping services by searching that way now? I don't know.)
osdiab 6y ago
It's mostly been word of mouth for me - Japanese friends telling me DeepL is way better for Japanese, people on HN complaining about Google Chrome performance vs Firefox. And competitors are coming pretty close to other Google stuff, Apple Maps is actually getting pretty good for me right now but mainly lacks the metadata about things like restaurant menus + the flexibility of routing like cheapest train fares or searching by last train and what not that Google has - honestly seems like low hanging fruit. Nobody gets close on search yet though, I've tried and failed to stick with DDG many times now.

asfasfasf12 6y ago

DeepL is better than google translate.

chimen 6y ago
Just tested and tried translating English to romanian (my language) - doesn't exist :)
- onionisafruit 6y ago
  What I gather from this is DeepL has far fewer inaccurate translations from English to Romanian.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    My translation service from /dev/null is even better than these two services. Not a single false translation. Guaranteed!

matsemann 6y ago

How would a better alternative surface?

chimen 6y ago
Here, on ProductHunt and any other way. How did Firefox re-invent itself? It attacked the very thing that Google could not provide: privacy. How is DDG on such a good trend lately? It requires a lot of effort I agree but google also put a lot of effort into their own products.
- boogies 6y ago
  Google puts in some effort, but if it doesn't work they just purloin others’ products. See the Yelp story in the leaked FTC documents the article linked: http://graphics.wsj.com/google-ftc-report/ http://graphics.wsj.com/google-ftc-report/

xwdv 6y ago

Some would say maybe the little startups should have a chance.

jagged-chisel 6y ago
Then they have to start by building a better product. Any suggestions for alternative services that outperform Google’s?
- xwdv 6y ago
  Alternatives? No. Fuck little startups, most of them hawk bullshit and don't get interesting until they grow into big companies. A startup won't compete well with Google for very long and using one instead of Google feels too much like pandering to a novelty.
  - JadeNB 6y ago
    > Fuck little startups, most of them hawk bullshit and don't get interesting until they grow into big companies. Surely you don't mean that it's the act of growing into a big company that makes them interesting, but rather that only the interesting ones make it to big companies. (I don't think I necessarily agree with that—I'd think amount of capital is a far bigger determinant—and I would notice that the converse is far from true.) Well, there's nothing wrong with sitting back and letting the market make the decision—but if someone's not there trying the little companies before they get big, then that's a market decision in its own right. > A startup won't compete well with Google for very long and using one instead of Google feels too much like pandering to a novelty. Or, perhaps, taking a stance on a matter of principle, about privacy, or about Google's monopoly powers, or, well, pick your poison.
- boogies 6y ago
  > Any suggestions for alternative services that outperform Google’s? Yes. Which one? This page seems full of people recommending DeepL, which is one I can personally recommend for Spanish, and others can swear by for any of the languages it supports. OpenStreetMap is great for more detailed and more frequently updated map data. The article shows how pathetic multiple competitors make Google Flights look https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/07/28/google-search-results-prioritize-google-products-over-competitors#competing-with-advertisers https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/07/28/google-sea... (and it seems the industry rate 10+ other services above it https://www.frommers.com/slideshows/848046-the-10-best-and-worst-airfare-search-sites https://www.frommers.com/slideshows/848046-the-10-best-and-w...). DuckDuckGo's search results are as good for me (not everyone), and it invented the instant answer (IIRC), has 2 click dark mode, bangs and other features, and is a good place to find more alternatives.

Slartie 6y ago

Actually, on text translations, DeepL nowadays outclasses Google Translate IMHO. The only downside is that they don't appear to offer some kind of transparent website translate feature ("put a URL in and it translates the entire site, with layout kept intact"), at least not for free. But if I happen to have a paragraph or so in some foreign language and want that translated to some language I can understand, DeepL has become my first stop due to its consistently higher result quality.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
vinay427 6y ago
I would be prepared to switch over completely for the languages they support if DeepL didn't insert their advertisement at the bottom of some results (I've had this accidentally included in an email before), and if they had a mobile app with a text selection action on Android to highlight text and see a popup with the translation. As it is, I use it most of the time but still rely on Google Translate being more accessible. Obviously DeepL is newer, so these limitations are understandable.
- abdusco 6y ago
  > if they had a mobile app with a text selection action on Android to highlight text and see a popup with the translation I've had the same frustration, so I've written a simple script/app with Tasker (and AutoShare plugin) to select text and translate from DE -> EN. I use it quite frequently to learn German.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  One weird quirk of DeepL is that when you become a $5/mo subscriber, you can't use their free /translator page while logged in.
bobsoap 6y ago
Same here, I've been consistently surprised at how much better (and more natural/accurate) deepl is than google at translating, especially for sentences and paragraphs.

pgrote 6y ago

I am the product. I understand this with google and accept it. They can extract whatever information they want in exchange for decent results when I search whether it comes from them or not. I get gmail, a phone os, a browser, an os, remote desktop and more for free from them. I pay for youtube premium. The value I get from google is worth it. Everything they provide is good enough and when I want a third party site or information I can get it. As a consumer, Google offers a great deal. There are two pain points with google. The first is support, but what can you do when it is free. The second is the rollout of new products and then abandoning them. I do not run a business that is affected by Google's decisions, though. I understand if you are a company competing in an area google participates it is unfair.

andrepd 6y ago
The bitch is when you're forced to use their products whether you like it or not. Case in point recaptcha. Also many users are not in the least aware of the trade going on, and the magnitude and invasiveness of the surveillance.
- vntok 6y ago
  Google does not force companies to implement ReCaptcha on their own Web properties.
  - john-shaffer 6y ago
    Many government websites use reCAPTCHA. I do not have any choice in using it. If I were to block Google to avoid tracking, I could not function in society.
    - reaperducer 6y ago
      I had to use a reCAPTCHA on a government web site last week, and Google's stupid AI refused to accept that a picture of a wheelchair is not a bicycle. They both have spokes, so I must be a bot. Note to self: Never get in a vehicle steered by Google AI.

athenot 6y ago

The thing is, increasingly I'm catching it returning wrong answers. A few days I was looking up the approximate weight of a cup of flour to do a recipe conversion, and the "helpful answer" was pulled from some random site and was about 15% off-base compared to the median from a handful of other sites, including from flour companies. I've observed similar bad results when looking up information about medications… I feel bad for those acting on that information. Just like ads, I've learned to tune out that top part of the search result page. Honestly, the increasing noise feels a lot like Yahoo! in 2001.

leeoniya 6y ago
i run into this so often it might as well be called misinformation. it will surface parts of 2 different sentances which completely changes the meaning or context, or removes important nuance.
edoceo 6y ago
Well, one cup (volume) of flour can vary pretty widely in weight (108-138g in my notebook). Bleached, whole, Rye, AP, etc and even same type across brands. A variance of 15% is not too odd from my baking experience.
- jdashg 6y ago
  Yeah that's flour's perennial problem, and 15% is enough to really throw a bake off. Avoid any baking recipe that doesn't have a nice round number for grams of flour, and even then be suspicious. (baker's percents are always welcome though!)
  - edoceo 6y ago
    A professional baker who's business I spent some time getting to know would test bake a standard loaf from every batch of flour purchased. Their recipe would get micro adjustment depending on results. Not as necessary for home baked 1kg loafs.
- Jasper_ 6y ago

torgoguys 6y ago

>“We want to get you out of Google and to the right place as fast as possible,” co-founder Larry Page said in 2004. The article presents you as some sort of "gotcha" quote demonstrating how Google overturned a core value or something. Yes, Google search results have changed, but what it is now is very much in the spirit of that original value. I searched for something. Google gave me the answer directly. Boom, I'm done. Get in, get the answer fast, get out. I can go back to my life.

zentiggr 6y ago
And who gives a crap about the livelihoods of the sources Google pulled that info from and now will never see your traffic. You think Google did all the original research and information creation to populate their answers? And since when do they provide decent attribution and link-throughs to the sources they used, so you can check their graph? Or do you really trust Google's automation of everything to generate accurate results every time?
- renewiltord 6y ago
  It’s the same thing as with ads and ad blocking, etc: your business model is not my problem.
  - calcifer 6y ago
    Well, let's just hope your business model doesn't get co-opted by a giant company one day. That would be horrible.
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      If it does, my business dies. That's life. My problem to solve.

hrktb 6y ago

> Many of them save me extra clicks which is convenient. I think the point is that some are convenient, others aren’t, but they all have prominent positioning. Google is not the best flight search service, yet it’s on top. As you say, it wouldn’t matter if Google was the best at everything all the time. The issue is that of course it isn’t, and will never be.

andrepd 6y ago
Out of curiosity which flight search is better than flights.google?
- input_sh 6y ago
  Momondo, Skyscanner, TripAdvisor, Expedia.
  - gfxgirl 6y ago
    Those are all scammy sights covered in ads and tracking by 30-60 ad companies. I prefer to be tracked by just one and not served ads
    - hrktb 6y ago
      It’s a valid point, but also feels like Stockholm Syndrome in a way. Why not accept our abuser, if they protect us from everyone else also trying to abuse us ?
    - zentiggr 6y ago
      Use an adblocker _and_ visits sites that are more likely to show you a full selection of flight info and the actual lowest fares?
  - vultour 6y ago
    How is any of those better than Google Flights?
- s3r3nity 6y ago

boogies 6y ago

> Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. This is patently false, and probably a reflection of the Google bubble you live in. DeepL is pretty objectively superior to Google, as evaluated by journalists who natively speak the languages it translates in the articles linked on their website. You can find plenty of in depth reviews online, and every one I've read has admitted that it's at absolute worst as bad as Google Translate. Edit: https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/29/deepl-schools-other-online-translators-with-clever-machine-learning/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/29/deepl-schools-other-online... Maps is a different story, but there are certainly better options for certain specific needs. I'd like to see the noise-pollution based routing service on HN's frontpage yesterday remade with Google Maps. Search is somewhat subjective, but I haven't used Google Search in several years and I don't consider an engine that requires me to scroll past page after page of ads — including what amount to ads for services like Google's inferior flight service, that won't necessarily be easily removed by an "out of the box" ad blocker — high quality. And those are the services you picked. The article has a great little analysis of Google Flights and why "It did not crack the top 10 of Frommer’s 2020 ranking of airfare search engines, for instance" and why the FTC's leaked documents called it out for providing less options. (Spoiler: Up to 80% more expensive flights, when it found flights at all).

pydry 6y ago
I've found plenty of situations where OSM has better data than Google Maps.
- boogies 6y ago
  Absolutely, eg. the woods near my house have trails mapped out in OSM that don't exist on Google Maps.
  - iggldiggl 6y ago
    I also find Google's colour scheme rather obnoxious when I want to use the map to actually orient myself (instead of it being merely a convenient geographical background for displaying POIs and route planning) – forests aren't displayed at all once you start zooming in and the distinction between built-up areas and open space (which isn't great to start with) gets more and more indistinct as well.

hnlmorg 6y ago

> Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. There certainly did used to be competition to Google Translate but Google crushed them by promoting their own services (which came later)[1]. I often see the argument made that these monopolies just happen to have the best software but often those arguments miss how those monopolies had already killed the competition and were now suffocating the market so new competition struggles to rise. This was a common tactic by Microsoft in the 90s too, so it's by no means unique to Google. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babel_Fish_(website) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babel_Fish_(website)

ViViDboarder 6y ago
Exactly. We can see that in the future for the examples from the article too. When Google started promoting Google Flights and Hotels over other sites, they did not offer close to the best information. In fact, as the article claims, they still don’t. Yet despite that competitors are losing traffic and going out of business (eg. Hipmunk). It’s not hard to see where this leads over time. The competitors struggle to stay in business or even get the traffic needed to improve their products while Google gets to keep investing and iterating. Maybe in 5-10 years they’ll have a product better than the existing ones, but they’ll also have driven most competitors to obscurity.
- gfxgirl 6y ago
  not my experience. The experience at Google Fllghts is 100x better than any other flight search service. It's like the difference between Google Maps when it shipped and Mapquest. Mapquest was instantly a joke with its server side rendered pages. Google Flights is fast. Every other site is slow.
  - ViViDboarder 6y ago
    If you read the article they highlight the fact that they omit routes and prices at times that can be found on IATA. For me, speed is one factor of product quality, but result integrity is the thing that I care the most about.

JadeNB 6y ago

> Many of them save me extra clicks which is convenient. Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. … Build better alternatives and I'm on board. This is why they don't have better competitors. To compete with Google, you have to, out of the gate, and with them as mediators, match or exceed on every aspect of their experience a company that, from the perspective of just about any competitor out there, has just about unlimited resources. If you do start to make it and gain some traction—again, necessarily often through Google's own services—it is well within Google's power to focus on you specifically, say, by snooping on your data on an Android phone, and make sure to drive you out of the market.

birksherty 6y ago

I agree. The reason I still use google is most of the times I don't have to open another website to get my answers. I don't have to load the slow javascript heavy sites and saves me time. Google is not just links to websites but also serves information directly. Obviously if I need better understanding and deep knowledge I open the links, but I don't need that often.

hbharadwaj 6y ago

Edge Chromium has Microsoft Translate which does a pretty good job as well

wmeredith 6y ago

When a better one comes along ... you'll never know.

onion2k 6y ago

Build better alternatives and I'm on board. In the end, Google is a business - I would promote my own shit on the first vertical as well. You: I wish people would build products that successfully compete with Google. Also you: It's fine if Google do things that stop their competitors successfully competing with Google. This is literally exactly the reason why anti-trust laws exist - to stop a company who are successful in one area (search, advertising) unfairly dominating other areas (maps, translation) by suppressing their competition. For all you know there might be a map provider that you'd prefer - but while Google leverage their advantage running the premier search engine to put themselves at the top of every geographic search you're never going to find out.

Mirioron 6y ago
But if Google search didn't send me to Google maps when I was looking for maps then I would explicitly go to Google maps. In that case there would be no chance for any competitor to do better.
- ksk 6y ago
  And how does one know that Google even has a maps service to go to? Google maps didn't start out great or even good (Its pretty good now). Google promotes their beta-level products over other mature products to the point the competition is starved of visitors, while Google iterates their own product. So now, after the fact, you can go "Well, there's no one else, I guess Google does the right thing in showing me Google maps as the first result".
  - elpool2 6y ago
    It was a while ago, but I remember Google maps being far better than any other map service when it first launched.
    - reaperducer 6y ago
      The reason Google Maps was successful in its early days wasn't because of its quality, it was because it was free. The other options were just as good, but often you had to pay for them. With Google, you could repeatedly refine the bad results until you found something useful, because there was zero additional cost involved.

ksk 6y ago

Data based algorithms can only get better when you feed them data. Google makes sure that the data only goes to their own algorithms. Its a chicken and egg situation IMHO.

dvduval 6y ago

There are some great translation tools besides Google translate. I find Microsoft translate sometimes outperforms Google translate for certain languages. For example Google doesn't even have Cantonese. And there are some translation apps coming out of China that are also really awesome. I can't speak for other languages. I just wanted to point out that Google putting themselves first in the results is not always an indicator that it is the best results.

lhorie 6y ago

> Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. I will get mad when those products have better alternatives but it's not the case. Just think about it: where do you think the money to fund development of maps, translation etc comes from? Nobody pays a dime to use these services, so they clearly aren't self-sustaining. Now think about your own income. Imagine google comes up with some way to provide the same skillset you offer by pouring ad money into researching some hypothetical singularity AI or whatever, and then offering that to your employers for free (in exchange for ad placement in your company's end product), causing you to lose not only your job, but your ability to get any related jobs anywhere. That's obviously an extreme and highly hypothetical scenario, but it illustrates what anti-trust laws are supposed to stop.

tenebrisalietum 6y ago

> search There was a recent HN post about the declining quality of Google search in that most search results seem to be more and more leading to SEO spam. Is your experience with Google Search different?

simonkafan 6y ago

You write this like its a fact but it's just your opinion. Deepl.com for example is on par and imho even better than Google Translate for some languages.

jaggirs 6y ago

Then you should get mad, because there are better alternatives to google translate (deepl).

el-salvador 6y ago

It depends on the country. Naver has super detailed maps of Korea. Yandex Street View image quality is great in Russia.

wazoox 6y ago

Deepl crushes Google Translate in quality. Depending upon your needs (bike, anyone? -> https://cycle.travel https://cycle.travel - minimal gas consumption? try https://maps.openrouteservice.org/ https://maps.openrouteservice.org/ ) there are better alternatives to Google Maps. DuckDuckGo is much less annoying than Google and for a few years arguably as good.

vbezhenar 6y ago

Deepl works better than translate. Yandex and 2Gis works better than Google maps for my region. Google search is superb, can't really argue with that.

chris92de 6y ago

> Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. At least for Translate I can wholeheartedly recommend DeepL as competitor. Does it lack languages? Sure, but the quality of translations seem subjectively better than that of Google Translate - especially for longer texts.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

pwdisswordfish2 6y ago

This is a very typical response on HN in response to articles/blog posts about issues raised by the Google business. When these sort of comments rise to the top of HN threads, I am at a loss how to interpret the meaning. 1. Does it mean the commenter and HN voters do not care about the issue (e.g., anti-competitive behaviour)? or 2. Does it mean they normally would care about anti-competitive behaviour but because they "like" this particular company they do not care? If the commenter means #2, then it seems like there are some assumptions being made. For example, one assumption might be that if Google is held accountable for anti-competitive behaviour then it will affect the commenter's "web user experience". However, I cannot see how to arrive at that conclusion. In fact, the commenter states "Build better alternatives and I'm on board." What if anti-competitive behaviour was an impediment to others seeking to "[b]uild better alternatives"? If holding Google to account for anti-competitive behaviour would remove such impediments, then it seems that the commenter is more likely to mean #1. The commenter appears to desire the most convenient and quick "service" he/she can get, and is impartial to who provides it. He/she acknowledges that others could build better alternatives to Google. If holding Google accountable for its conduct helps others build better alternatives, this would meet the commenter's needs. Without further clarification from the commenter, I am going to assume that #1 better represents his/her meaning.