4 ms·

Just to be clear, you're listing Google as a counterexample, as a piece of software that was good rather than just marketed as such, right? [ I would accept it

• bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  yes.
• thrower123 5y ago
  Perhaps people do not remember what using search engines in the 90s was like; statistically, there are a huge number of current software engineers who never did, and a largish number who were not even born when Google Search launched.
  • bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    sure, but perhaps the same is true for a lot of products that nowadays we think are not necessarily that good but only marketed as such. At any rate the original parent said that good has never won out, and I think there is still a larger number of people on HN than not that can remember at least one software product that was better. on edit: I mean there seems to be a large number of people of the opinion, and I concur, that Google now is not as good as the Google of a decade ago. This is part of the reason why I think that many products we think of as bad might actually have been very good at the time that they gained their initial success.
• dnautics 5y ago
  At the beginning Google was pretty much technically better than yahoo (and even Altavista, which I would argue was the "technical" leader). It also solved search for that era; you really could find anything on google, and easily, so it was a better product too. The definition of "better software" is vague. Does it mean technically better? Better product? Easier to use? Ethical? Probably have to ask GP for clarifcation on that.