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At Voila, a subsidiary of France Telecom, a study around 2005 found that their search engine offered nearly the same answers as Google, while not in exactly the

At Voila, a subsidiary of France Telecom, a study around 2005 found that their search engine offered nearly the same answers as Google, while not in exactly the same order. Despite this objective comparison, in users' view Google's results were much much better. I remember a German CS professor telling me eyes in eyes with obviously a lot of schadenfreud "Google will kill you". And I answered "No they will become as us, big, fat and ugly".

dragonwriter 4y ago
> At Voila, a subsidiary of France Telecom, a study around 2005 found that their search engine offered nearly the same answers as Google, while not in exactly the same order. Order is a pretty big part of tbe value prop of a search engine, so ”nearly the same” results but “not in exactly the same order” is not as much similarity as you seem to be implying.
- JPLeRouzic 4y ago
  Come on, there's no absolute correctness for a result in being in Google's first versus second answer. The actual order depends a lot on the user's context. Even Google doesn't change the order of answers based on the user's context. Otherwise it wouldn't say in Google Web Console "your site appears in nth position"
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Come on, there’s no absolute correctness for a result in being in Google’s first versus second answer. “Absolute correctness” is an irrelevant standard. Order can affect satisfaction without "absolute correctness" being a thing that can even be assessed meaningfully. > Even Google doesn’t change the order of answers based on the user’s context. Yes, it does. [0] > Otherwise it wouldn’t say in Google Web Console “your site appears in nth position” I think that reflects the experience of a no-context user (e.g., not logged in or otherwise tied to a history to provide context.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contextual_searching#Automatically_inferred_context https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contextual_searching#Automatic...

dragonwriter 4y ago

> At Voila, a subsidiary of France Telecom, a study around 2005 found that their search engine offered nearly the same answers as Google, while not in exactly the same order. Order is a pretty big part of tbe value prop of a search engine, so ”nearly the same” results but “not in exactly the same order” is not as much similarity as you seem to be implying.

JPLeRouzic 4y ago
Come on, there's no absolute correctness for a result in being in Google's first versus second answer. The actual order depends a lot on the user's context. Even Google doesn't change the order of answers based on the user's context. Otherwise it wouldn't say in Google Web Console "your site appears in nth position"
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Come on, there’s no absolute correctness for a result in being in Google’s first versus second answer. “Absolute correctness” is an irrelevant standard. Order can affect satisfaction without "absolute correctness" being a thing that can even be assessed meaningfully. > Even Google doesn’t change the order of answers based on the user’s context. Yes, it does. [0] > Otherwise it wouldn’t say in Google Web Console “your site appears in nth position” I think that reflects the experience of a no-context user (e.g., not logged in or otherwise tied to a history to provide context.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contextual_searching#Automatically_inferred_context https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contextual_searching#Automatic...