4 ms·

I would love to hear your theories as to why, or your reasoning for why this is normal.

A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
The article appears to be conflating three different things: 1. The decline and eventual collapse of Gigablast 2. The decline of Google/Bing 3. The poor quality of other search engines like Chatnoir. It's not clear that these three things are related. Gigablast seems as though it were a personal project, and indications are that it was mismanaged. (Posting bizarre political messages -- the sort of thing you'd see on novelty bumper stickers -- on your company's website does not inspire confidence.) The decline of Google's search engine has been well characterized, e.g. in "Enshittification" and Ed Zitron's work, and it's quite well understood as the reflection of a perverse incentives problem. Small search engines, e.g. Chatnoir, were never good. Bing, also, was never good -- outside a few narrow niches, like video search, and that very temporarily.
- n1xis10t 1y ago
  Fair. Now, I don’t understand why some big company doesn’t see that all the search engines are terrible quality, and then make a better product and steal the market. Sure, google does their anti-competitive things, but I think at this point there are enough people who dislike the current situation, and a good search engine could survive anyway.
  - Kye 1y ago
    Microsoft tried that. Its market share 15+ years on is probably why no one else tried.
    - n1xis10t 1y ago
      Yeah, Microsoft tried it by making a product that has (as far as I know) always been smaller and less useful than Google. Do you think it is impossible to make a better product than Google?
      - Kye 1y ago
        They did blind "taste tests" that showed people preferred Bing. Even Microsoft can't overcome Google's inertia with a better product even with the marketing blitzes they've done and all their efforts to push it through Windows. It's not impossible but it's clearly a hard problem, and all the other big companies seem to prefer doing something else.
        n1xis10t 1y ago
        Can you provide a link to these “taste tests”? Personally I could see preferring bing over google just for the UI up until maybe 2018, but back then Google was better too. As for the quality of results, I wasn’t paying attention back then. I am guessing that these “taste tests” were done around that time or before, and I wonder how they would go today.
        Kye 1y ago
        It was a long time ago. They stripped it of identifying features for the test. Finding information on it is hard on account of the overall decline in search quality. There might be a post on it here on HN but I couldn't find it on a quick search.
        n1xis10t 1y ago
        Is this what you are remembering? https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2012/09/06/bing-it-on-bing-goes-toe-to-toe-against-google/?amp=1 https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2012/09/06/bing-it-on-bing... I found that by searching with DuckDuckGo (which is Bing) for "prefer bing" "taste test". If that is what you are remembering, then I would point out that the article makes it sound like Microsoft conducted the test, and if that is the case I could see the test results being less trustworthy. Also the sample size was only 1000 people, which is really small. Bing it On was what they called the campaign, that’s pretty funny. Hey, you might be able to do a test like this today, as an impartial third party. The Cross Origin Policy might make it harder though, see this: https://web.archive.org/web/20230321113801/https://gigablast.com/blog.html https://web.archive.org/web/20230321113801/https://gigablast... I could see this statistic combined with Bing’s market share being a reason why companies would decide not to try making a search engine, so you have a point there. Considering how terrible both search engines are though, I think it’s a dumb decision. We need a better search engine.

The article appears to be conflating three different things: 1. The decline and eventual collapse of Gigablast 2. The decline of Google/Bing 3. The poor quality of other search engines like Chatnoir. It's not clear that these three things are related. Gigablast seems as though it were a personal project, and indications are that it was mismanaged. (Posting bizarre political messages -- the sort of thing you'd see on novelty bumper stickers -- on your company's website does not inspire confidence.) The decline of Google's search engine has been well characterized, e.g. in "Enshittification" and Ed Zitron's work, and it's quite well understood as the reflection of a perverse incentives problem. Small search engines, e.g. Chatnoir, were never good. Bing, also, was never good -- outside a few narrow niches, like video search, and that very temporarily.

n1xis10t 1y ago
Fair. Now, I don’t understand why some big company doesn’t see that all the search engines are terrible quality, and then make a better product and steal the market. Sure, google does their anti-competitive things, but I think at this point there are enough people who dislike the current situation, and a good search engine could survive anyway.
- Kye 1y ago
  Microsoft tried that. Its market share 15+ years on is probably why no one else tried.
  - n1xis10t 1y ago
    Yeah, Microsoft tried it by making a product that has (as far as I know) always been smaller and less useful than Google. Do you think it is impossible to make a better product than Google?
    - Kye 1y ago
      They did blind "taste tests" that showed people preferred Bing. Even Microsoft can't overcome Google's inertia with a better product even with the marketing blitzes they've done and all their efforts to push it through Windows. It's not impossible but it's clearly a hard problem, and all the other big companies seem to prefer doing something else.
      - n1xis10t 1y ago
        Can you provide a link to these “taste tests”? Personally I could see preferring bing over google just for the UI up until maybe 2018, but back then Google was better too. As for the quality of results, I wasn’t paying attention back then. I am guessing that these “taste tests” were done around that time or before, and I wonder how they would go today.
        Kye 1y ago
        It was a long time ago. They stripped it of identifying features for the test. Finding information on it is hard on account of the overall decline in search quality. There might be a post on it here on HN but I couldn't find it on a quick search.
        n1xis10t 1y ago
        Is this what you are remembering? https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2012/09/06/bing-it-on-bing-goes-toe-to-toe-against-google/?amp=1 https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2012/09/06/bing-it-on-bing... I found that by searching with DuckDuckGo (which is Bing) for "prefer bing" "taste test". If that is what you are remembering, then I would point out that the article makes it sound like Microsoft conducted the test, and if that is the case I could see the test results being less trustworthy. Also the sample size was only 1000 people, which is really small. Bing it On was what they called the campaign, that’s pretty funny. Hey, you might be able to do a test like this today, as an impartial third party. The Cross Origin Policy might make it harder though, see this: https://web.archive.org/web/20230321113801/https://gigablast.com/blog.html https://web.archive.org/web/20230321113801/https://gigablast... I could see this statistic combined with Bing’s market share being a reason why companies would decide not to try making a search engine, so you have a point there. Considering how terrible both search engines are though, I think it’s a dumb decision. We need a better search engine.