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I think we disagree on Google's legendary omniscience. Minimizing the years-long frustration I, and many I've talked to, have experienced because Google knows b

I think we disagree on Google's legendary omniscience. Minimizing the years-long frustration I, and many I've talked to, have experienced because Google knows best is a hollow argument to me. The quality of their product degraded and they just kinda... did nothing about it for awhile. It got so bad it had to turn into a press thing before they did something about it. The press is damn lazy, so for my money, that means something. As to the rest – I share you admiration for that kind of gumption. Money can so easily blind and poison progress. So the strategy to continue evolving is sound! The tactics, though, are dubious. I'd say that any changes to search need to be made with relevance, convenience and user satisfaction as inviolable factors. Anything else is playing with fire in a library, if you're Google. Or maybe not. We'll see. I just really want my 2007-era Google search back.

joebadmo 15y ago
That seems like a perfectly reasonable point to collegially disagree on. I can't say that I have any special insight into what goes on inside Google, but contrary to your experience, I feel my search experience has generally gotten better. I doubt that Google at any point "did nothing" about search quality, but again, I have no special insight there. I do think that Google frantically doing something in opposition to a hostile SEOsphere can look like nothing, while in fact being a whole lot. I do agree that the tactics are often dubious. I certainly don't always agree with them. But I can simultaneously understand the motivations behind them. I would have loved to see more grand, open initiatives like Wave, even as it failed spectacularly, but I can understand the trepidation.
babblefrog 15y ago
You can't go back. 2007-era Google would be unusable with all the SEO-hacks that people have discovered since then. Google has to keep tuning their algorithms to stay ahead of the "optimizers" and spammers.
- danilocampos 15y ago
  I'm sensible of the challenges Google faces algorithmically. I was speaking solely of user experience – how the product interprets my input.

joebadmo 15y ago

That seems like a perfectly reasonable point to collegially disagree on. I can't say that I have any special insight into what goes on inside Google, but contrary to your experience, I feel my search experience has generally gotten better. I doubt that Google at any point "did nothing" about search quality, but again, I have no special insight there. I do think that Google frantically doing something in opposition to a hostile SEOsphere can look like nothing, while in fact being a whole lot. I do agree that the tactics are often dubious. I certainly don't always agree with them. But I can simultaneously understand the motivations behind them. I would have loved to see more grand, open initiatives like Wave, even as it failed spectacularly, but I can understand the trepidation.

babblefrog 15y ago

You can't go back. 2007-era Google would be unusable with all the SEO-hacks that people have discovered since then. Google has to keep tuning their algorithms to stay ahead of the "optimizers" and spammers.

danilocampos 15y ago
I'm sensible of the challenges Google faces algorithmically. I was speaking solely of user experience – how the product interprets my input.