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The “Google is going downhill” narrative only exists in the tech bubble. No one actually thinks this way in the real world. Generative AI features can enhance

The “Google is going downhill” narrative only exists in the tech bubble. No one actually thinks this way in the real world. Generative AI features can enhance search somewhat but aren’t a replacement. It’s not enough of a driver on its own to take market share from Google.

lelanthran 3y ago
> The “Google is going downhill” narrative only exists in the tech bubble. No one actually thinks this way in the real world Maybe. But the opinion that Google is returning less relevant results is sooner or later going to go mainstream unless they start returning relevant results. We're users too, but we notice things first. Just because the other users haven't noticed them doesn't mean that they won't in the near future.
- dangus 3y ago
  I personally don’t even agree that Google returns irrelevant results. I am a DuckDuckGo user and I still use the !G flag when the results I’m getting aren’t good. Every time I go over to Google the results improve slightly. ChatGPT is a game changer when it comes to getting a system to understand the underlying meaning of my query. I used to give the example of searching for Frank Lloyd Wright’s height - doing so on a search engine would give you results about the buildings themselves. You’d have to dig for the simple information of how tall the dude was. Alas, Google actually fixed this and quickly displays the man’s actual height now. Microsoft and Google are both going to integrate AI into their search engines and they’ll both improve drastically as a result. We’re only scratching the surface on the subject.
  - brookst 3y ago
    It’s not so much that Google returns irrelevant results as it is that Google returns results that are optimized for taking as long as possible to glean the information you’re looking for. Recipes are the classic example. Because Google upranks sites that people spend more time on after a click, most recipe searches yield pages that start with the history of flour milling and what milk is, before eventually getting to the desired recipe 5000 words later.
    - dangus 3y ago
      I don’t agree that Google is optimizing for time wasting, either. The faster they get you to click an ad link the faster they get paid. The phenomenon with recipes that you mention has nothing to do with Google: it has more to do with copyright. You can’t copyright a recipe, but you can copyright written commentary about cooking a recipe. The recipe blogs also need enough content to place ads around.
    - KMag 3y ago
      From my memory working on web indexing at Google roughly 15 years ago, there was a step function for detecting "short clicks" that indicated a page was irrelevant for that query. As long as the user spent above some minimum before returning to Google, increased time on the site didn't indicate higher quality. So, the real optimum is ranking for one or more popular searches (regardless of relevance), looking vaguely interesting, and just confusing enough that it takes a couple of seconds to realize this isn't the page you wanted. Either that, or being exactly what someone wants for one of the popular searches. Though, things may have changed, and my memory definitely has faded. Also, plenty of SEOs may have misunderstood short clicks as a quality signal, so even if maximizing time on site doesn't help, I wouldn't be surprised if SEOs still recommend it.
  - amadeuspagel 3y ago
    > ChatGPT is a game changer when it comes to getting a system to understand the underlying meaning of my query. I used to give the example of searching for Frank Lloyd Wright’s height - doing so on a search engine would give you results about the buildings themselves. You’d have to dig for the simple information of how tall the dude was. > Alas, Google actually fixed this and quickly displays the man’s actual height now. That's really the only thing I want: A search engine that understands my queries. I don't want to chat with a computer.
- jampekka 3y ago
  Isn't this how Google (as search) got off? Altavista et al got spammed into unusable mess and their use collapsed almost overnight when PageRank (temporarily as we've learned) managed to filter out the spam. Of course nowadays Google's tentacles are so deeply everywhere that they will churn on with subpar technology just like e.g. Oracle, SAP, IBM, Microsoft etc etc. The oligopoly is probably here to stay.
  - amadeuspagel 3y ago
    It's so easy to try out another search engine, and people do all the time. It's also easy to set any search engine as the default, unless you use iOS. It's also super easy to use different search engines in parallel. I often search HN for a different perspective and for live search. Sometimes also github. And of course amazon, whenever I want to order something.
  - KMag 3y ago
    > PageRank (temporarily as we've learned) managed to filter out the spam. It was more temporary (shorter time period) than you probably realize. I was a developer on the Google web indexing system. PageRank was only one of many signals that went into ranking, and PageRank was gamed by link farms pretty early. There's a whole team dedicated to fighting webspam, and their spam signals are some of the other inputs to the scorer. By Google's golden years, there was a whole lot of secret sauce going into fighting webspam, and PageRank had been pretty thoroughly gamed. PageRank was important, but I think its importance is generally over-estimated. Also, about 15 years ago, Google was testing another link-graph-based metric that was more efficient to calculate and less susceptible to linkfarms. I imagine PageRank (as described in the patent/Wikipedia) has been replaced, though perhaps the new algorithm is still referred to as PageRank. (IIRC, the proposed replacement was being called PageRankNG while in testing.)
- Aurornis 3y ago
  > Maybe. But the opinion that Google is returning less relevant results is sooner or later going to go mainstream unless they start returning relevant results. Less relevant compared to what? Consumers don’t see this as Google going downhill, they see it as the internet going downhill. And I agree. It’s not as though I can jump over to DuckDuckGo or Bing and my search quality radically increases. Usually the opposite. ChatGPT is helpful because it gives a very convincing feeling of being right. Whether or not it’s actually right is another question.
  - littlestymaar 3y ago
    > Less relevant compared to what? Compared to what the user wanted when they ran the search in the first place. > It’s not as though I can jump over to DuckDuckGo or Bing and my search quality radically increases. Usually the opposite. Of course it's a personal anecdote but as a DDG user since 2014 I routinely add !g to my search when the results don't satisfy me (which happen every once in a while, say once a month). This used to help, as most of the time Google had the answer I was looking for and could not find otherwise, but I don't think it happened even once over the past two years: Google is now at least as bad as DDG when it used to be strongly superior.
  - Atreiden 3y ago
    > And I agree. It’s not as though I can jump over to DuckDuckGo or Bing and my search quality radically increases. Usually the opposite. I acknowledge that it is a paid service, but you haven't tried Kagi yet you should give it a go! Default Search quality is very good, with no ads, tracking, or telemetry, and you can use Lenses and customizations to get even better results. You can even block certain sites from appearing in search (or simply de-rank them), which has dramatically reduced Pinterest and other SEO spam for me.
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    > Consumers don’t see this as Google going downhill, they see it as the internet going downhill. And I think they're right. More and more information on the internet is siloed into apps or behind paywalls. Knowledgeable people who used to write technical articles now make youtube videos (far less searchable). And the good stuff on the internet is diluted with low quality content written by someone who has to churn out an article every 15 minutes that is hard to filter out, even as a human. (I wasted 3 hours yesterday because a website gave me the wrong formula for something)
- jfoster 3y ago
  It doesn't matter who agrees Google is delivering less relevant results until someone is delivering significantly more relevant results. As of now, that does not yet exist. It should only be a matter of time, but the only safe assumption is that smart, >$1T companies don't give up on their core businesses too easily.
realusername 3y ago
Both can be true, Google is going downhill but that's not enough of a motivation to switch, defaults are very powerful.
- bombcar 3y ago
  It’s going to be a freaking cliff when it happens - the moment Tim Apple thinks that Google as a default isn’t good enough for the iPhone he’ll have it switch to some LLM powered by DuckDuckBing or something, and Google’s search traffic will plunge.
  - realusername 3y ago
    I'm not sure it's exactly how it will pan out but it's clear that those LLMs are a new existential threat for Google. They can answer a lot of questions in a lot of ways that Google just cannot.
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    And then you'll watch in helpless horror as 90% of iPhone users willingly install the Gmail and YouTube apps.
pydry 3y ago
The decline of a monopoly is like going bankrupt. It happens slowly first. Then all at once. Their position is entrenched enough that they'd be able to exist just on brand fumes for a good number of years yet but once the rot sets in there's no coming back.
rightbyte 3y ago
I got this hunch that most searches are for the top domain of a site as people forget of it is .org, .com, .gov or .us or whatever. However, I don't understand how statcounter got the data about usage it the first place. Their methodology might be flawed.
Aurornis 3y ago
Also, average people’s tech habits don’t change overnight. Tech people will change browsers, search engines, and SaaS tools without much thought. The average person learns something and sticks with it for a very long time. Bing is playing a long game. There are a lot of examples of things people in tech bubbles think that have little relevance in the real world: That Google can’t be trusted, that everyone wants laptops with upgradable RAM and phones with swappable batteries, that desktop websites should take priority over mobile, that offline apps are preferred over cloud apps. Spend some time in product management and you realize that tech people’s demands are unique. Even the claimed demands of tech bubble people often fail to materialize into sales. Just look at all the demand for mini iPhones in tech bubbles compared to how little they actually sold.
- tempest_ 3y ago
  This used to be the case when using a computer before the mobile walled gardens took hold. Non tech savvy people don't even realize they are using Chrome in android or Safari on an iphone. They will never change they just use the default search bar that is on their device.
josefx 3y ago
Didn't it come up during the epic lawsuit that google going downhill is irrelevant since most users will use the default no matter how bad it is?
boringg 3y ago
I used DDG as my standard but I find that I still need to go to google for all the conveniences that they have built into their search functionality. I have to give them credit they have figured out somethings to keep you binded to their search.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
aquova 3y ago
While I don't think it's enough to drive people to a different product, the fact that Google search is noticeably worse than in prior years has definitely gained mainstream attention. The amount of ads and SEO junk has caused frustration, but the alternatives aren't well known for most people to bother to switch. An artist I follow on Youtube put out this (comical) video regarding it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrFv1O4dbqY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrFv1O4dbqY
helboi4 3y ago
Honestly my fairly tech illiterate mother is constantly complaining about how google is full of ads and irrelevant information. I'm not sure that people don't notice. It's just they know there's nothing better.

lelanthran 3y ago

> The “Google is going downhill” narrative only exists in the tech bubble. No one actually thinks this way in the real world Maybe. But the opinion that Google is returning less relevant results is sooner or later going to go mainstream unless they start returning relevant results. We're users too, but we notice things first. Just because the other users haven't noticed them doesn't mean that they won't in the near future.

dangus 3y ago
I personally don’t even agree that Google returns irrelevant results. I am a DuckDuckGo user and I still use the !G flag when the results I’m getting aren’t good. Every time I go over to Google the results improve slightly. ChatGPT is a game changer when it comes to getting a system to understand the underlying meaning of my query. I used to give the example of searching for Frank Lloyd Wright’s height - doing so on a search engine would give you results about the buildings themselves. You’d have to dig for the simple information of how tall the dude was. Alas, Google actually fixed this and quickly displays the man’s actual height now. Microsoft and Google are both going to integrate AI into their search engines and they’ll both improve drastically as a result. We’re only scratching the surface on the subject.
- brookst 3y ago
  It’s not so much that Google returns irrelevant results as it is that Google returns results that are optimized for taking as long as possible to glean the information you’re looking for. Recipes are the classic example. Because Google upranks sites that people spend more time on after a click, most recipe searches yield pages that start with the history of flour milling and what milk is, before eventually getting to the desired recipe 5000 words later.
  - dangus 3y ago
    I don’t agree that Google is optimizing for time wasting, either. The faster they get you to click an ad link the faster they get paid. The phenomenon with recipes that you mention has nothing to do with Google: it has more to do with copyright. You can’t copyright a recipe, but you can copyright written commentary about cooking a recipe. The recipe blogs also need enough content to place ads around.
  - KMag 3y ago
    From my memory working on web indexing at Google roughly 15 years ago, there was a step function for detecting "short clicks" that indicated a page was irrelevant for that query. As long as the user spent above some minimum before returning to Google, increased time on the site didn't indicate higher quality. So, the real optimum is ranking for one or more popular searches (regardless of relevance), looking vaguely interesting, and just confusing enough that it takes a couple of seconds to realize this isn't the page you wanted. Either that, or being exactly what someone wants for one of the popular searches. Though, things may have changed, and my memory definitely has faded. Also, plenty of SEOs may have misunderstood short clicks as a quality signal, so even if maximizing time on site doesn't help, I wouldn't be surprised if SEOs still recommend it.
- amadeuspagel 3y ago
  > ChatGPT is a game changer when it comes to getting a system to understand the underlying meaning of my query. I used to give the example of searching for Frank Lloyd Wright’s height - doing so on a search engine would give you results about the buildings themselves. You’d have to dig for the simple information of how tall the dude was. > Alas, Google actually fixed this and quickly displays the man’s actual height now. That's really the only thing I want: A search engine that understands my queries. I don't want to chat with a computer.
jampekka 3y ago
Isn't this how Google (as search) got off? Altavista et al got spammed into unusable mess and their use collapsed almost overnight when PageRank (temporarily as we've learned) managed to filter out the spam. Of course nowadays Google's tentacles are so deeply everywhere that they will churn on with subpar technology just like e.g. Oracle, SAP, IBM, Microsoft etc etc. The oligopoly is probably here to stay.
- amadeuspagel 3y ago
  It's so easy to try out another search engine, and people do all the time. It's also easy to set any search engine as the default, unless you use iOS. It's also super easy to use different search engines in parallel. I often search HN for a different perspective and for live search. Sometimes also github. And of course amazon, whenever I want to order something.
- KMag 3y ago
  > PageRank (temporarily as we've learned) managed to filter out the spam. It was more temporary (shorter time period) than you probably realize. I was a developer on the Google web indexing system. PageRank was only one of many signals that went into ranking, and PageRank was gamed by link farms pretty early. There's a whole team dedicated to fighting webspam, and their spam signals are some of the other inputs to the scorer. By Google's golden years, there was a whole lot of secret sauce going into fighting webspam, and PageRank had been pretty thoroughly gamed. PageRank was important, but I think its importance is generally over-estimated. Also, about 15 years ago, Google was testing another link-graph-based metric that was more efficient to calculate and less susceptible to linkfarms. I imagine PageRank (as described in the patent/Wikipedia) has been replaced, though perhaps the new algorithm is still referred to as PageRank. (IIRC, the proposed replacement was being called PageRankNG while in testing.)
Aurornis 3y ago
> Maybe. But the opinion that Google is returning less relevant results is sooner or later going to go mainstream unless they start returning relevant results. Less relevant compared to what? Consumers don’t see this as Google going downhill, they see it as the internet going downhill. And I agree. It’s not as though I can jump over to DuckDuckGo or Bing and my search quality radically increases. Usually the opposite. ChatGPT is helpful because it gives a very convincing feeling of being right. Whether or not it’s actually right is another question.
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  > Less relevant compared to what? Compared to what the user wanted when they ran the search in the first place. > It’s not as though I can jump over to DuckDuckGo or Bing and my search quality radically increases. Usually the opposite. Of course it's a personal anecdote but as a DDG user since 2014 I routinely add !g to my search when the results don't satisfy me (which happen every once in a while, say once a month). This used to help, as most of the time Google had the answer I was looking for and could not find otherwise, but I don't think it happened even once over the past two years: Google is now at least as bad as DDG when it used to be strongly superior.
- Atreiden 3y ago
  > And I agree. It’s not as though I can jump over to DuckDuckGo or Bing and my search quality radically increases. Usually the opposite. I acknowledge that it is a paid service, but you haven't tried Kagi yet you should give it a go! Default Search quality is very good, with no ads, tracking, or telemetry, and you can use Lenses and customizations to get even better results. You can even block certain sites from appearing in search (or simply de-rank them), which has dramatically reduced Pinterest and other SEO spam for me.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  > Consumers don’t see this as Google going downhill, they see it as the internet going downhill. And I think they're right. More and more information on the internet is siloed into apps or behind paywalls. Knowledgeable people who used to write technical articles now make youtube videos (far less searchable). And the good stuff on the internet is diluted with low quality content written by someone who has to churn out an article every 15 minutes that is hard to filter out, even as a human. (I wasted 3 hours yesterday because a website gave me the wrong formula for something)
jfoster 3y ago
It doesn't matter who agrees Google is delivering less relevant results until someone is delivering significantly more relevant results. As of now, that does not yet exist. It should only be a matter of time, but the only safe assumption is that smart, >$1T companies don't give up on their core businesses too easily.

realusername 3y ago

Both can be true, Google is going downhill but that's not enough of a motivation to switch, defaults are very powerful.

bombcar 3y ago
It’s going to be a freaking cliff when it happens - the moment Tim Apple thinks that Google as a default isn’t good enough for the iPhone he’ll have it switch to some LLM powered by DuckDuckBing or something, and Google’s search traffic will plunge.
- realusername 3y ago
  I'm not sure it's exactly how it will pan out but it's clear that those LLMs are a new existential threat for Google. They can answer a lot of questions in a lot of ways that Google just cannot.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  And then you'll watch in helpless horror as 90% of iPhone users willingly install the Gmail and YouTube apps.

pydry 3y ago

The decline of a monopoly is like going bankrupt. It happens slowly first. Then all at once. Their position is entrenched enough that they'd be able to exist just on brand fumes for a good number of years yet but once the rot sets in there's no coming back.

rightbyte 3y ago

I got this hunch that most searches are for the top domain of a site as people forget of it is .org, .com, .gov or .us or whatever. However, I don't understand how statcounter got the data about usage it the first place. Their methodology might be flawed.

Aurornis 3y ago

Also, average people’s tech habits don’t change overnight. Tech people will change browsers, search engines, and SaaS tools without much thought. The average person learns something and sticks with it for a very long time. Bing is playing a long game. There are a lot of examples of things people in tech bubbles think that have little relevance in the real world: That Google can’t be trusted, that everyone wants laptops with upgradable RAM and phones with swappable batteries, that desktop websites should take priority over mobile, that offline apps are preferred over cloud apps. Spend some time in product management and you realize that tech people’s demands are unique. Even the claimed demands of tech bubble people often fail to materialize into sales. Just look at all the demand for mini iPhones in tech bubbles compared to how little they actually sold.

tempest_ 3y ago
This used to be the case when using a computer before the mobile walled gardens took hold. Non tech savvy people don't even realize they are using Chrome in android or Safari on an iphone. They will never change they just use the default search bar that is on their device.

josefx 3y ago

Didn't it come up during the epic lawsuit that google going downhill is irrelevant since most users will use the default no matter how bad it is?

boringg 3y ago

I used DDG as my standard but I find that I still need to go to google for all the conveniences that they have built into their search functionality. I have to give them credit they have figured out somethings to keep you binded to their search.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

aquova 3y ago

While I don't think it's enough to drive people to a different product, the fact that Google search is noticeably worse than in prior years has definitely gained mainstream attention. The amount of ads and SEO junk has caused frustration, but the alternatives aren't well known for most people to bother to switch. An artist I follow on Youtube put out this (comical) video regarding it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrFv1O4dbqY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrFv1O4dbqY

helboi4 3y ago

Honestly my fairly tech illiterate mother is constantly complaining about how google is full of ads and irrelevant information. I'm not sure that people don't notice. It's just they know there's nothing better.