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"They simply have a better product" I disagree. 100% they had a better product, but they have absolutely mangled it over the last few updates. Honestly, if I w

by alvah 2y ago

"They simply have a better product" I disagree. 100% they had a better product, but they have absolutely mangled it over the last few updates. Honestly, if I wanted the opinion of randomnumbers45123 on Reddit, I'd just search Reddit. Google achieved dominance ~25 years ago by being better than the alternatives, and the other search engines pretty much withered away rapidly. They (Google) are in a very precarious position right now. They will certainly not disappear overnight, but if / when the public becomes aware of something better, the implosion could be spectacular.

rstuart4133 2y ago
For a decade of so I was in charge internal web page for mobile users. I had control over the devices the end users had, the web browser they used, I maintained the back end. In that deployment the best product was Firefox. There were two major reasons. It could be deployed on all platforms we used (we didn't support iOS). Secondly it was by far the most reliable. We still have the occasional use who would use Chrome on Android or whatever, and at least one or twice a year Chrome would push a broken version. It's odd, as before that I would have put Google's code quality above Mozilla's. At least for Chrome/Firefox it's not, and the difference is large.
- londons_explore 2y ago
  Occasionally pushing a bad update is a symptom of having 10x as many Devs pushing 10x as many features each month. Even if Googles QA process was triple as good as Mozilla's, the users would still see more breakage.
  - michaelmrose 2y ago
    I don't think you can scale or compare like that numerically. Every commit isn't a chance for it to break for users because they bundle however many commits into a release and resources required to test the release don't scale per commit.
    - londons_explore 2y ago
      I think most of the recent breakage has been server side changes and feature flags. Ie "whoops, people who were in this 1% experiment had their browser crash when we pushed an update to the spell check dictionary because we didn't test that combination". Risks like that scale closer to the number of features/number of Devs, since Devs can be fiddling with server side config outside the release process.
    - dartos 2y ago
      More devs writing more code causes more bugs. Seems to make sense.
hot_gril 2y ago
This doesn't seem like a disagreement. They still have the best search engine at the moment.
- smolder 2y ago
  They really don't, though Kagi costs $. Even ignoring that it's a bit unclear, since in many cases DDG or bing give better results.
  - ratorx 2y ago
    Do you have any examples or types of query of where a free search engine produces better results? I tried to Google for it, but maybe expectedly, that doesn’t bring up any good examples. I think free has the be table-stakes for the default search engine, because otherwise you are forcing all users to change or buy a license, so any paid alternatives are out. Disclaimer: Work at Google; not on search-related things, opinions my own.
    - hot_gril 2y ago
      I can only name one example where Bing gives better results, but it's only because Google intentionally doesn't: 123movies
    - smolder 2y ago
      Off the top of my head I can't offer examples, only my impression. In general Google seems better at narrowing in on what I'm looking for especially with more complicated queries, but in some cases the DDG results will turn up less spammy/more desirable results in the top few when I search with both.
- alvah 2y ago
  It absolutely is a disagreement. I don't agree they have the best search engine at the moment. They did until they crippled it with the last 2 big updates.
  - 2y ago
episteme 2y ago
You'd search reddit how? Using their search? Good luck.
theshrike79 2y ago
People always _always_ forget that Google today is an ad company first. They do search, phones and mobile operating systems as side projects.
- websap 2y ago
  Gross over simplification.
  - majewsky 2y ago
    Out of Google's 2023 revenue of 305.63e9 US-$, 77.8% (237.86e9 US-$) was advertising revenue. Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-revenue-of-google/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-reven... They are obviously not only an ad company, but GP only claimed that they are an ad company "first". Can you please clarify which part you consider oversimplified?
    - SuperNinKenDo 2y ago
      Consider the case of a YouTuber who gets most of their revenue through superchats. They regularly upload videos, a couple times a week, and receive ad revenue and the od sponsorship deal. Once a week they do a livestream Q&A which is where the bulk of that superchat revenue comes from. Are they a livestreaming "first" business-man/company/sole trader? Revenue sources are not necessarily the be all and end all of determining what your key business concern is, or what your business should put first.
      - latexr 2y ago
        > Are they a livestreaming "first" business-man/company/sole trader? Maybe, it depends on what they do next. Will they start uploading fewer videos and live-streaming more because they realised that’s where the money is? > Revenue sources are not necessarily the be all and end all of determining what your key business concern is, or what your business should put first. Agreed. But Google does put ads first. All the tracking, web proposals, Chrome, it’s all in service of ads. Perhaps you’re using an ad blocker and that’s making you forget, but Google’s services, like search and YouTube, are huge blobs of ads with a few bits of content sprinkled throughout and the ratio is getting worse in the ads’ favour. So yes, Google is an ad company. Not because it makes the most money from it, but because most of its effort is in expanding and defending their ad revenue. Heck, they literally spend billions of dollars just to make sure you search with their engine to see their ads.
melodyogonna 2y ago
They're still better than the alternatives
johnchristopher 2y ago
> Honestly, if I wanted the opinion of randomnumbers45123 on Reddit, I'd just search Reddit. I am not commenting on your whole comment but I noticed I am looking more and more on reddit for randomnumber45123's advice than listicles or press review articles that haven't used for 6 months the product I am considering buying. Of course I just add "reddit" to my google query. I heard something was going on with google and reddit though (no irony, just hadn't time to check out what it's about yet).
delfinom 2y ago
>I'd just search Reddit. You forget something. Reddit's search engine has historically been absolute dogshit. In fact there was a short time period it just opened a google window back in the day because they struggled to get it to work. It's gotten better in recent years but it's relatively meh compared to just having google search the reddit domain. Lol
- alvah 2y ago
  It's not really the point I'm making though. Google search has become defacto Reddit / Quora search, and they haven't been transparent about this to the public. While they did have to do something about all the AI-generated unedited spam, replacing it with random Reddit commenters doesn't seem like it's necessarily any better.
cueo 2y ago
> Honestly, if I wanted the opinion of randomnumbers45123 on Reddit, I'd just search Reddit. Reddit search sucks, in my experience I get much better results using Google vs Reddit search.

by alvah 2y ago

rstuart4133 2y ago

For a decade of so I was in charge internal web page for mobile users. I had control over the devices the end users had, the web browser they used, I maintained the back end. In that deployment the best product was Firefox. There were two major reasons. It could be deployed on all platforms we used (we didn't support iOS). Secondly it was by far the most reliable. We still have the occasional use who would use Chrome on Android or whatever, and at least one or twice a year Chrome would push a broken version. It's odd, as before that I would have put Google's code quality above Mozilla's. At least for Chrome/Firefox it's not, and the difference is large.

londons_explore 2y ago
Occasionally pushing a bad update is a symptom of having 10x as many Devs pushing 10x as many features each month. Even if Googles QA process was triple as good as Mozilla's, the users would still see more breakage.
- michaelmrose 2y ago
  I don't think you can scale or compare like that numerically. Every commit isn't a chance for it to break for users because they bundle however many commits into a release and resources required to test the release don't scale per commit.
  - londons_explore 2y ago
    I think most of the recent breakage has been server side changes and feature flags. Ie "whoops, people who were in this 1% experiment had their browser crash when we pushed an update to the spell check dictionary because we didn't test that combination". Risks like that scale closer to the number of features/number of Devs, since Devs can be fiddling with server side config outside the release process.
  - dartos 2y ago
    More devs writing more code causes more bugs. Seems to make sense.

hot_gril 2y ago

This doesn't seem like a disagreement. They still have the best search engine at the moment.

smolder 2y ago
They really don't, though Kagi costs $. Even ignoring that it's a bit unclear, since in many cases DDG or bing give better results.
- ratorx 2y ago
  Do you have any examples or types of query of where a free search engine produces better results? I tried to Google for it, but maybe expectedly, that doesn’t bring up any good examples. I think free has the be table-stakes for the default search engine, because otherwise you are forcing all users to change or buy a license, so any paid alternatives are out. Disclaimer: Work at Google; not on search-related things, opinions my own.
  - hot_gril 2y ago
    I can only name one example where Bing gives better results, but it's only because Google intentionally doesn't: 123movies
  - smolder 2y ago
    Off the top of my head I can't offer examples, only my impression. In general Google seems better at narrowing in on what I'm looking for especially with more complicated queries, but in some cases the DDG results will turn up less spammy/more desirable results in the top few when I search with both.
alvah 2y ago
It absolutely is a disagreement. I don't agree they have the best search engine at the moment. They did until they crippled it with the last 2 big updates.
- 2y ago

episteme 2y ago

You'd search reddit how? Using their search? Good luck.

theshrike79 2y ago

People always _always_ forget that Google today is an ad company first. They do search, phones and mobile operating systems as side projects.

websap 2y ago
Gross over simplification.
- majewsky 2y ago
  Out of Google's 2023 revenue of 305.63e9 US-$, 77.8% (237.86e9 US-$) was advertising revenue. Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-revenue-of-google/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-reven... They are obviously not only an ad company, but GP only claimed that they are an ad company "first". Can you please clarify which part you consider oversimplified?
  - SuperNinKenDo 2y ago
    Consider the case of a YouTuber who gets most of their revenue through superchats. They regularly upload videos, a couple times a week, and receive ad revenue and the od sponsorship deal. Once a week they do a livestream Q&A which is where the bulk of that superchat revenue comes from. Are they a livestreaming "first" business-man/company/sole trader? Revenue sources are not necessarily the be all and end all of determining what your key business concern is, or what your business should put first.
    - latexr 2y ago
      > Are they a livestreaming "first" business-man/company/sole trader? Maybe, it depends on what they do next. Will they start uploading fewer videos and live-streaming more because they realised that’s where the money is? > Revenue sources are not necessarily the be all and end all of determining what your key business concern is, or what your business should put first. Agreed. But Google does put ads first. All the tracking, web proposals, Chrome, it’s all in service of ads. Perhaps you’re using an ad blocker and that’s making you forget, but Google’s services, like search and YouTube, are huge blobs of ads with a few bits of content sprinkled throughout and the ratio is getting worse in the ads’ favour. So yes, Google is an ad company. Not because it makes the most money from it, but because most of its effort is in expanding and defending their ad revenue. Heck, they literally spend billions of dollars just to make sure you search with their engine to see their ads.

melodyogonna 2y ago

They're still better than the alternatives

johnchristopher 2y ago

> Honestly, if I wanted the opinion of randomnumbers45123 on Reddit, I'd just search Reddit. I am not commenting on your whole comment but I noticed I am looking more and more on reddit for randomnumber45123's advice than listicles or press review articles that haven't used for 6 months the product I am considering buying. Of course I just add "reddit" to my google query. I heard something was going on with google and reddit though (no irony, just hadn't time to check out what it's about yet).

delfinom 2y ago

>I'd just search Reddit. You forget something. Reddit's search engine has historically been absolute dogshit. In fact there was a short time period it just opened a google window back in the day because they struggled to get it to work. It's gotten better in recent years but it's relatively meh compared to just having google search the reddit domain. Lol

alvah 2y ago
It's not really the point I'm making though. Google search has become defacto Reddit / Quora search, and they haven't been transparent about this to the public. While they did have to do something about all the AI-generated unedited spam, replacing it with random Reddit commenters doesn't seem like it's necessarily any better.

cueo 2y ago

> Honestly, if I wanted the opinion of randomnumbers45123 on Reddit, I'd just search Reddit. Reddit search sucks, in my experience I get much better results using Google vs Reddit search.