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Is Google desktop search dead? It's certainly been "shittier" but it's been adequate. Unlike Bing and Yahoo, there isn't clickbait fake news all over the scre

by axus 3y ago

Is Google desktop search dead? It's certainly been "shittier" but it's been adequate. Unlike Bing and Yahoo, there isn't clickbait fake news all over the screen. In a market where competitors are a bookmark away, it should be dead, but the big names seem to all collude on having a bad experience that makes more short-term money. How is success being measured internally for "the man who killed Google Search"? Are profits for that piece moving on the right trajectory now in 2024? Is Google really that hierarchical, that the decisions made by one person lead to all the problems? Maybe I'd believe it, but the article did not convince me that one guy was going against all efforts and better advice to tank the company.

isodev 3y ago
> clickbait fake news all over the screen That’s my current experience with Google search as well, even for the most direct and obvious technical queries like “do X in Y language”
- axus 3y ago
  Yeah it's the pictures that really bother me, but you're not wrong. On the phone, I turn off "Discover".
cbsmith 3y ago
Yeah, the amazing thing is that everyone talks about how Google destroyed search, but fails to acknowledge that nobody with a better search emerged. The amount of money at stake with regards to search is such that the decline of search across the board is far more a reflection of a systemic cause than anything that happened inside any particular company.
- barfbagginus 3y ago
  Gpt4 driving the Bing tool is a better search engine than Google. First it can critique your objectives and turn them into effective search terms. Second it can filter through spam and avoid displaying it. Third it can reach into the contents of Target pages and actually extract the solution to the problem you're having. These are all things that classic search engines had the opportunity to provide, but declined, in some cases due to the anti-competitive nature of reaching into pages and extracting answers, and in other cases because they would have reduced revenues.
  - cbsmith 3y ago
    Prior to Gpt4 there was PowerSet, which was specifically targeting search. They got bought by Microsoft and then... nothing. While you can use Gpt4 to do the job, you have to ask yourself why there isn't a search engine just using it.
- dpkirchner 3y ago
  Google incentivizes low-quality content, content that well-intentioned and - designed search engines must deal with as well. At this point, we're seeing a garbage in/garbage out problem.

by axus 3y ago

isodev 3y ago

> clickbait fake news all over the screen That’s my current experience with Google search as well, even for the most direct and obvious technical queries like “do X in Y language”

axus 3y ago
Yeah it's the pictures that really bother me, but you're not wrong. On the phone, I turn off "Discover".

cbsmith 3y ago

Yeah, the amazing thing is that everyone talks about how Google destroyed search, but fails to acknowledge that nobody with a better search emerged. The amount of money at stake with regards to search is such that the decline of search across the board is far more a reflection of a systemic cause than anything that happened inside any particular company.

barfbagginus 3y ago
Gpt4 driving the Bing tool is a better search engine than Google. First it can critique your objectives and turn them into effective search terms. Second it can filter through spam and avoid displaying it. Third it can reach into the contents of Target pages and actually extract the solution to the problem you're having. These are all things that classic search engines had the opportunity to provide, but declined, in some cases due to the anti-competitive nature of reaching into pages and extracting answers, and in other cases because they would have reduced revenues.
- cbsmith 3y ago
  Prior to Gpt4 there was PowerSet, which was specifically targeting search. They got bought by Microsoft and then... nothing. While you can use Gpt4 to do the job, you have to ask yourself why there isn't a search engine just using it.
dpkirchner 3y ago
Google incentivizes low-quality content, content that well-intentioned and - designed search engines must deal with as well. At this point, we're seeing a garbage in/garbage out problem.