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I remember in like 5th grade rural PA schools learning about Boolean operators in search engines and falling in love with them. For context, they were presentin
by hughesjj 2y ago
I remember in like 5th grade rural PA schools learning about Boolean operators in search engines and falling in love with them. For context, they were presenting alta vista and yahoo kids search as the most popular with Google being a "simple but effective new search platform" we might want to check out.
By the time I graduated highschool you already couldn't trust that Boolean operators would be treated literally. By the time I graduated college, they basically didn't seem to do anything, at best a weak suggestion.
Nowadays quotes don't even seem to be consistently honored.
- II2II 2y agoEven though I miss using boolean operators in search, I doubt that it was ever sustainable outside of specialized search engines. Very few people seem to think in those terms. Many of those who do would still have difficulty forming complex queries. I suspect the real problem is that search engines ceased being search engines when they stopped taking things literally and started trying to interpret what people mean. Then they became some sort of poor man's AI. Now that we have LLMs, of course it is going to replace the poor excuse for search engines that exist today. We were heading down that road already, and it actually summarizes what is out there.
- jordanb 2y agoPeople were learning. Just like with mice and menus, people are capable of learning new skills and querying search engines was one. I remember when it was considered a really "n00b" thing to type a full question into a search engine. Then Google decided to start enforcing that, because they had this idea that they would be able to divine your "intent" from a "natural question" rather than just matching documents including your search terms.