8 ms·

Things like this seem so arbitrarily hostile to intelligent people who just want to find what they're looking for in an efficient way. Why does this keep happen

Things like this seem so arbitrarily hostile to intelligent people who just want to find what they're looking for in an efficient way. Why does this keep happening? Who benefits from these developments?

ploxiln 3y ago
There are 10x the customers who don't have any idea about these search operators, and sometimes accidentally include one, and are dissatisfied with the results. Companies can't help but cater to the 10x bigger market. They probably spend money less carefully too, so are more valuable to advertisers. I don't attribute any malice to this kind of thing. I just expect that if a project or product is trying to be more easy and delightful to more users, using telemetry and the latest UX design research etc, then it's going to stop being a tool for smart technical people, even if that's how it became known in the first place. It wants to be a solution, a product, not a tool. I've realized that I like tools, particularly those that require skill to use. The mass market just always goes the other way. You'll have to find another niche project/product. The great benefit of locally-run open-source software is that you can keep using the tool even if the project goes a different way, and open-source projects can be forked by even smaller interested groups.
- throwfaraway9 3y ago
  [flagged]
- atxbcp 3y ago
  > There are 10x the customers who don't have any idea about these search operators, and sometimes accidentally include one, and are dissatisfied with the results but then they could disable them by default, and users can enable them in the settings ? Removing them entirely just makes the product worse.
  - rendaw 3y ago
    Or add a button, etc.
  - sltkr 3y ago
    I take it you don't have real world experience with product management? Adding options isn't free. If you drop a feature you can delete the code and stop testing it. It you make it an option instead, you need to maintain and test two features instead of one, even though one is only used by a tiny minority of users. If you have N binary options that creates a total of 2^N different configurations. If the features are perfectly orthogonal you only need to test N+1 things, but in reality, features may interact in unexpected ways, and you may have to test a significant subset of 2^N combinations to make sure you've covered all real-world scenarios. And you will still get confused users. “Why does Bob get different results than me? Are you profiling me?” Alice complains, forgetting that she had turned a feature on/off in the options. etc. That doesn't mean you should never add any options: many products require a certain amount of configurability to adapt to different user needs. But there is a cost to adding features, and a product manager should carefully consider the pros and cons. If “just make it an option” is your answer to everything you will end up with an unmaintainable product that is likely to confuse the majority of users.
    - mdaniel 3y ago
      I hear you, and yet DDG takes this to the extreme by maintaining completely separate frontends for those who don't want to run JS or want to sidestep the getting-started hand-holding (https://html.duckduckgo.com/html https://html.duckduckgo.com/html and https://start.duckduckgo.com/ https://start.duckduckgo.com/ respectively; while digging into that, I also learned they have https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite too for whatever that does) So a hypothetical expert.ddg.gg wouldn't be out of character for them I am aware that there is a slight nuance here between what one may consider just theming of the frontend versus potentially changing how query syntax works, but I just wanted to point out that DDG has embraced UX-flags-via-domain-name which would be in-your-face different from some secret toggle on a settings page
- nazgulsenpai 3y ago
  I think with a "privacy focused" search engine that isn't the default on virtually any device or browser, you get a pretty savvy subset of the general population. The 10x probably use whatever the default search is.
- abdullahkhalids 3y ago
  > There are 10x the customers who don't have any idea about these search operators The homepage of duckduckgo contains a lot of information about their products, and a whole FAQ about the search engine. Maybe if they also included a list of these operators, inexperienced people might learn about them. People don't use these operators because they don't know about them, not because it's difficult.
  - aembleton 3y ago
    > The homepage of duckduckgo contains a lot of information about their products How many people read these pages?
- somenameforme 3y ago
  Sites like DDG explicitly require opting out of the 'Google economy' which is going to bias their userbase disproportionately towards higher information users. I can even give a specific example how this changes things. In March 2022 DDG decided to start downranking "Russian disinformation." You might reasonably claim that the average response to this would be no worse than neutral. But the impact on DDG? You can see the results on their traffic here [1]. I have to use an archive link because they removed public reporting of traffic figures shortly thereafter. The graph there defaults to display traffic averaged out over 365 days, but the day figure (on the top left of the graph) is configurable, since the data is (somewhat oddly) all client-side. Change it to something like a 7 day average to actually be able to see what happened. Basically smaller sites are serving different demographics. That's precisely how they succeed. And this is also where a lot of their word of mouth comes from, which is going to be a major factor in their growth. Take your users for granted, and you risk losing not only them - but also the growth they would have provided you with. You even risk getting the opposite - of negative word of mouth. In any case, it's a sure path to rapid decline for any smaller company. [1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20220511093804/https://duckduckgo.com/traffic https://web.archive.org/web/20220511093804/https://duckduckg...
p-e-w 3y ago
The same people who use such features are also on average - more likely to use ad blockers. - more likely to critically evaluate any advertising/propaganda they encounter. - more likely to use VPNs and other technology that makes them more difficult to track. - more likely to be "power users" of the service, thus consuming more resources than the average user. Many more points like these apply, but the bottom line is that the ROI for such users, from the service provider's point of view, is terrible, so alienating them makes perfect business sense. And since competition has almost disappeared from the technology industry, there are no unintended consequences to be expected in most cases.
- kennywinker 3y ago
  You forgot - more likely to recommend your service to friends and family when they ask their power user friend which service to use. A move like that is shortsighted at best, not good business sense.
  - midoridensha 3y ago
    I think this one is really overrated. My family never asks my input on what to use; they always buy Apple stuff, inkjet printers with expensive ink subscription services, etc. If I try to talk to them about, for instance, getting a laser printer instead, it goes nowhere. Heck, just getting them to use Facebook Messenger to talk to me since I'm living on another continent is almost too much apparently. In my experience, non-technical people don't ask power users what to use, because they'll get answers they don't want and conflict with all the slick marketing they've been brainwashed with. So instead, they'll frequently try to coerce their technical family members into buying the mass-market stuff they like instead, particularly iPhones.
    - brucethemoose2 3y ago
      People are just stubborn and creatures of habit, and they dont want to expend energy on a change that is difficult and unimportant. That is the crux of it. I have family that wont tolerate any changes on their smartphone, wont create or use an email account and such... they arent even very old. But it kinda reinforces your point: they dont really take power user advice either, especially if it conflicts with something they already know. Also, I think computers used to be more enigmatic to the non techy, but now they are very accessible. People dont feel like they need help.

ploxiln 3y ago

There are 10x the customers who don't have any idea about these search operators, and sometimes accidentally include one, and are dissatisfied with the results. Companies can't help but cater to the 10x bigger market. They probably spend money less carefully too, so are more valuable to advertisers. I don't attribute any malice to this kind of thing. I just expect that if a project or product is trying to be more easy and delightful to more users, using telemetry and the latest UX design research etc, then it's going to stop being a tool for smart technical people, even if that's how it became known in the first place. It wants to be a solution, a product, not a tool. I've realized that I like tools, particularly those that require skill to use. The mass market just always goes the other way. You'll have to find another niche project/product. The great benefit of locally-run open-source software is that you can keep using the tool even if the project goes a different way, and open-source projects can be forked by even smaller interested groups.

throwfaraway9 3y ago
[flagged]
atxbcp 3y ago
> There are 10x the customers who don't have any idea about these search operators, and sometimes accidentally include one, and are dissatisfied with the results but then they could disable them by default, and users can enable them in the settings ? Removing them entirely just makes the product worse.
- rendaw 3y ago
  Or add a button, etc.
- sltkr 3y ago
  I take it you don't have real world experience with product management? Adding options isn't free. If you drop a feature you can delete the code and stop testing it. It you make it an option instead, you need to maintain and test two features instead of one, even though one is only used by a tiny minority of users. If you have N binary options that creates a total of 2^N different configurations. If the features are perfectly orthogonal you only need to test N+1 things, but in reality, features may interact in unexpected ways, and you may have to test a significant subset of 2^N combinations to make sure you've covered all real-world scenarios. And you will still get confused users. “Why does Bob get different results than me? Are you profiling me?” Alice complains, forgetting that she had turned a feature on/off in the options. etc. That doesn't mean you should never add any options: many products require a certain amount of configurability to adapt to different user needs. But there is a cost to adding features, and a product manager should carefully consider the pros and cons. If “just make it an option” is your answer to everything you will end up with an unmaintainable product that is likely to confuse the majority of users.
  - mdaniel 3y ago
    I hear you, and yet DDG takes this to the extreme by maintaining completely separate frontends for those who don't want to run JS or want to sidestep the getting-started hand-holding (https://html.duckduckgo.com/html https://html.duckduckgo.com/html and https://start.duckduckgo.com/ https://start.duckduckgo.com/ respectively; while digging into that, I also learned they have https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite too for whatever that does) So a hypothetical expert.ddg.gg wouldn't be out of character for them I am aware that there is a slight nuance here between what one may consider just theming of the frontend versus potentially changing how query syntax works, but I just wanted to point out that DDG has embraced UX-flags-via-domain-name which would be in-your-face different from some secret toggle on a settings page
nazgulsenpai 3y ago
I think with a "privacy focused" search engine that isn't the default on virtually any device or browser, you get a pretty savvy subset of the general population. The 10x probably use whatever the default search is.
abdullahkhalids 3y ago
> There are 10x the customers who don't have any idea about these search operators The homepage of duckduckgo contains a lot of information about their products, and a whole FAQ about the search engine. Maybe if they also included a list of these operators, inexperienced people might learn about them. People don't use these operators because they don't know about them, not because it's difficult.
- aembleton 3y ago
  > The homepage of duckduckgo contains a lot of information about their products How many people read these pages?
somenameforme 3y ago
Sites like DDG explicitly require opting out of the 'Google economy' which is going to bias their userbase disproportionately towards higher information users. I can even give a specific example how this changes things. In March 2022 DDG decided to start downranking "Russian disinformation." You might reasonably claim that the average response to this would be no worse than neutral. But the impact on DDG? You can see the results on their traffic here [1]. I have to use an archive link because they removed public reporting of traffic figures shortly thereafter. The graph there defaults to display traffic averaged out over 365 days, but the day figure (on the top left of the graph) is configurable, since the data is (somewhat oddly) all client-side. Change it to something like a 7 day average to actually be able to see what happened. Basically smaller sites are serving different demographics. That's precisely how they succeed. And this is also where a lot of their word of mouth comes from, which is going to be a major factor in their growth. Take your users for granted, and you risk losing not only them - but also the growth they would have provided you with. You even risk getting the opposite - of negative word of mouth. In any case, it's a sure path to rapid decline for any smaller company. [1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20220511093804/https://duckduckgo.com/traffic https://web.archive.org/web/20220511093804/https://duckduckg...

p-e-w 3y ago

The same people who use such features are also on average - more likely to use ad blockers. - more likely to critically evaluate any advertising/propaganda they encounter. - more likely to use VPNs and other technology that makes them more difficult to track. - more likely to be "power users" of the service, thus consuming more resources than the average user. Many more points like these apply, but the bottom line is that the ROI for such users, from the service provider's point of view, is terrible, so alienating them makes perfect business sense. And since competition has almost disappeared from the technology industry, there are no unintended consequences to be expected in most cases.

kennywinker 3y ago
You forgot - more likely to recommend your service to friends and family when they ask their power user friend which service to use. A move like that is shortsighted at best, not good business sense.
- midoridensha 3y ago
  I think this one is really overrated. My family never asks my input on what to use; they always buy Apple stuff, inkjet printers with expensive ink subscription services, etc. If I try to talk to them about, for instance, getting a laser printer instead, it goes nowhere. Heck, just getting them to use Facebook Messenger to talk to me since I'm living on another continent is almost too much apparently. In my experience, non-technical people don't ask power users what to use, because they'll get answers they don't want and conflict with all the slick marketing they've been brainwashed with. So instead, they'll frequently try to coerce their technical family members into buying the mass-market stuff they like instead, particularly iPhones.
  - brucethemoose2 3y ago
    People are just stubborn and creatures of habit, and they dont want to expend energy on a change that is difficult and unimportant. That is the crux of it. I have family that wont tolerate any changes on their smartphone, wont create or use an email account and such... they arent even very old. But it kinda reinforces your point: they dont really take power user advice either, especially if it conflicts with something they already know. Also, I think computers used to be more enigmatic to the non techy, but now they are very accessible. People dont feel like they need help.