4 ms·

Google can be the next Google if they just stopped being evil for a second: 1. Let me ban domains like pinterest, quora, stackoverflow clones, stock image site

Google can be the next Google if they just stopped being evil for a second: 1. Let me ban domains like pinterest, quora, stackoverflow clones, stock image sites, etc without requiring a chrome extension. 2. Do what I ask it to do. Don't be too smart. Bring back the plus sign, minus sign, double quotes, tilde which have been deprecated over these years and stop polluting the results with what it thinks I want. 3. A new feature where I can search inside the top 100 search results. Where I can narrow down the search results using additional filters like I do on amazon searching for products. So i can say "5000mah -clickbank" in the top-100 search results to weed out spam and narrow my search accurately.

annexrichmond 5y ago
Maybe they can include these features in a premium service, and call it... Google+?
- superasn 5y ago
  I know your comment is tongue-in-cheek but I happily pay for Youtube premium and it's truly an amazing experience compared to the ad-ridden non-usable free Youtube. If Google created a similar Google premium where it had such features and no pesky ads I'd pay for it in a heartbeat.
  - cpill 5y ago
    yeah, but then your just encouraging them to make the free version a bad as is acceptable, like YouTube, and possibility create classes like on commercial airlines. you want the world divided into classes?
    - airstrike 5y ago
      The world is already divided between "free" and "paid", so I'm not sure what you're getting at here
    - DocTomoe 5y ago
      We already have classes, and some people do pay premium for better service and quality happily. A world without that choice, where everyone's experience is equally bad ... how sad that would be. Just ask your average east-European soviet-era survivor.
  - joering2 5y ago
    I'm about to do this as well. Must be amazing experience. First when I stareted youtube on my FireStick it was one commercial 5 seconds. Then 2 comms 5 sec. Then 2 each 1:30 seconds, but I can "skip ads" after 5 sec. Now its 2, sometimes 3, each 2:50 (I seen ad for some Christian church had 28 minutes!) and sometimes no "skip ads" button. The YT+ cost $18 per month... alot, until you realize huge freedom of not wasting 15 to 30 minutes a day when you want to do some research and watch some science-focused videos.
  - booi 5y ago
    Me too. and Youtube premium is insanely expensive for what it is.
  - lupire 5y ago
    Google already did it, and killed it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor
ryandrake 5y ago
4. How about an image search that... actually returns the URL of the raw image? Here's a dead simple use case that is just unnecessarily frustrating. As a user, I want a high res picture of a buffalo. So: a. I do an image search for "buffalo" and the results page contains thumbnails of buffalos. b. I click the first result, it's tagged with "nationalgeographic.com" so it's probably gonna be good. Instead of the image, I get another page, but with a slightly bigger picture than a thumbnail. When you over over it, it says "3,072 x 3,072" but the image itself is clearly not that resolution. c. So I click that image, and it opens a new goddamn tab of nationalgeographic.com's web site, with another picture, still not the promised 3,072 x 3,072! WTF!? When I try scrolling down to look for the raw image somewhere I'm hit with an E-mail signup-wall. Good grief! d. Little did I know, if at step b. I instead right-clicked on the image and selected "Open Image in a new tab", I'd have gotten the image I was looking for. Thanks, Google, for hiding the 99.9% use case that people want to do. The actual user experience should have been: a. I do an image search for "buffalo" and the results page contains thumbnails of buffalos next to clickable .jpg links. The End.
- lupire 5y ago
  Yes, everyone likes content better when they don't have to pay for it, all else equal. But content IP owners don't want to make content for free.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    They are welcome to disallow the Googlebot in their robots.txt.
  - airstrike 5y ago
    Well, in the age of "creators" I'm sure there are countless of people who would be willing to post pictures of buffalo "for free" if they believed they had a chance of having their work actually make it to the top of the search results
- arecurrence 5y ago
  Alas, Getty sued that experience into oblivion https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/internet-rages-after-google-removes-view-image-button-bowing-to-getty/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/internet-rages-after...
gigaflop 5y ago
An easy way to personally blacklist (and a bare minimum on/off switch if you need to toggle it) would make me so damn happy. Why should I be forced to look at a page full of purple links when searching for some specific programming topic? It feels like there's a bunch of potentially-fake developer blogs that copy/paste from Azure documentation, without adding anything novel.
scim-knox-twox 5y ago
Interestingly, there used to be an option to block domains: https://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/02/block-domains-from-googles-search.html https://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/02/block-domains-from... I currently recommend Kagi.com, it can block but also pin selected domains at the top of the results list.

annexrichmond 5y ago

Maybe they can include these features in a premium service, and call it... Google+?

superasn 5y ago
I know your comment is tongue-in-cheek but I happily pay for Youtube premium and it's truly an amazing experience compared to the ad-ridden non-usable free Youtube. If Google created a similar Google premium where it had such features and no pesky ads I'd pay for it in a heartbeat.
- cpill 5y ago
  yeah, but then your just encouraging them to make the free version a bad as is acceptable, like YouTube, and possibility create classes like on commercial airlines. you want the world divided into classes?
  - airstrike 5y ago
    The world is already divided between "free" and "paid", so I'm not sure what you're getting at here
  - DocTomoe 5y ago
    We already have classes, and some people do pay premium for better service and quality happily. A world without that choice, where everyone's experience is equally bad ... how sad that would be. Just ask your average east-European soviet-era survivor.
- joering2 5y ago
  I'm about to do this as well. Must be amazing experience. First when I stareted youtube on my FireStick it was one commercial 5 seconds. Then 2 comms 5 sec. Then 2 each 1:30 seconds, but I can "skip ads" after 5 sec. Now its 2, sometimes 3, each 2:50 (I seen ad for some Christian church had 28 minutes!) and sometimes no "skip ads" button. The YT+ cost $18 per month... alot, until you realize huge freedom of not wasting 15 to 30 minutes a day when you want to do some research and watch some science-focused videos.
- booi 5y ago
  Me too. and Youtube premium is insanely expensive for what it is.
- lupire 5y ago
  Google already did it, and killed it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor

ryandrake 5y ago

4. How about an image search that... actually returns the URL of the raw image? Here's a dead simple use case that is just unnecessarily frustrating. As a user, I want a high res picture of a buffalo. So: a. I do an image search for "buffalo" and the results page contains thumbnails of buffalos. b. I click the first result, it's tagged with "nationalgeographic.com" so it's probably gonna be good. Instead of the image, I get another page, but with a slightly bigger picture than a thumbnail. When you over over it, it says "3,072 x 3,072" but the image itself is clearly not that resolution. c. So I click that image, and it opens a new goddamn tab of nationalgeographic.com's web site, with another picture, still not the promised 3,072 x 3,072! WTF!? When I try scrolling down to look for the raw image somewhere I'm hit with an E-mail signup-wall. Good grief! d. Little did I know, if at step b. I instead right-clicked on the image and selected "Open Image in a new tab", I'd have gotten the image I was looking for. Thanks, Google, for hiding the 99.9% use case that people want to do. The actual user experience should have been: a. I do an image search for "buffalo" and the results page contains thumbnails of buffalos next to clickable .jpg links. The End.

lupire 5y ago
Yes, everyone likes content better when they don't have to pay for it, all else equal. But content IP owners don't want to make content for free.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  They are welcome to disallow the Googlebot in their robots.txt.
- airstrike 5y ago
  Well, in the age of "creators" I'm sure there are countless of people who would be willing to post pictures of buffalo "for free" if they believed they had a chance of having their work actually make it to the top of the search results
arecurrence 5y ago
Alas, Getty sued that experience into oblivion https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/internet-rages-after-google-removes-view-image-button-bowing-to-getty/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/internet-rages-after...

gigaflop 5y ago

An easy way to personally blacklist (and a bare minimum on/off switch if you need to toggle it) would make me so damn happy. Why should I be forced to look at a page full of purple links when searching for some specific programming topic? It feels like there's a bunch of potentially-fake developer blogs that copy/paste from Azure documentation, without adding anything novel.

scim-knox-twox 5y ago

Interestingly, there used to be an option to block domains: https://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/02/block-domains-from-googles-search.html https://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/02/block-domains-from... I currently recommend Kagi.com, it can block but also pin selected domains at the top of the results list.