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> This is a search tool that will only return content created before ChatGPT's first public release on November 30, 2022. The problem is that Google's search e
by shevy-java 10mo ago
> This is a search tool that will only return content created before ChatGPT's first public release on November 30, 2022.
The problem is that Google's search engine - but, oddly enough, ALL search engines - got worse before that already. I noticed that search engines got worse several years before 2022. So, AI further decreased the quality, but the quality had a downwards trend already, as it was. There are some attempts to analyse this on youtube (also owned by Google - Google ruins our digital world); some explanations made sense to me, but even then I am not 100% certain why Google decided to ruin google search.
One key observation I made was that the youtube search, was copied onto Google's regular search, which makes no sense for google search. If I casually search for a video on youtube, I may be semi-interested in unrelated videos. But if I search on Google search for specific terms, I am not interested in crap such as "others also searched for xyz" - that is just ruining the UI with irrelevant information. This is not the only example, Google made the search results worse here and tries to confuse the user in clicking on things. Plus placement of ads. The quality really worsened.
- justinclift 10mo agoAre you aware of Kagi (kagi.com)? With them, at least the AI stuff can be turned off. Membership is presently about 61k, and seems to be growing about 2k per month: https://kagi.com/stats https://kagi.com/stats
- amelius 10mo agoBe aware of: https://www.reddit.com/r/SearchKagi/comments/1gvlqhm/disappointed_in_kagis_decision_to_integrate_yandex/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SearchKagi/comments/1gvlqhm/disappo...
- justinclift 10mo agoDamn. I didn't know that. Now we need a 2nd Kagi, so we can switch to that one instead. :(
- smusamashah 10mo agoThere are few other powerful countries, with countless Web services, who freely wages war(s) on other countries and support wars in many different ways. Is there a way to avoid their products?
- jwr 10mo agoWhataboutism doesn't get us anywhere — saying "but what about X" (insert anything for X here) usually results in doing nothing. Some of us would rather take a stand, imperfect as it is, than just sit and do nothing. Especially in the very clear case of someone (Kagi) doing business with a country that invaded a neighboring country for no reason, and keeps killing people there.
- graemep 10mo agoWhy this particular stand? Is doing nothing any better than taking what are essentially random stands? Obviously if you are Ukrainian this will be an important stand to you, but otherwise doing things based on a mix of what the media you like focuses on or whatever is not really very different from doing nothing.
- baconbrand 10mo agoDoing something is literally the opposite of doing nothing. This is complete gibberish.
- immibis 10mo agoIt's "doing nothing" because it's rationalizing keeping the status quo. Avoiding Kagi is doing nothing; using Kagi is doing something.
- clucas 10mo agoI think "no wars of conquest" is a bright line that was crossed by Russia, that hasn't been crossed by other nations in a long time. And I think it's important for the whole world to take a stand on that, not just the nation that was invaded. It's not a "random stand."
- eirini1 10mo agoI don't agree with this logic. It implies that people who use Google, Bing and a million other products made by US-based companies are supportive of the huge amount of attrocities commited or aided by the United States. Or other countries. It feels very odd to single out Russia's invasion of Ukraine but to minimize the Israeli genocide of palestinians in Gaza, the multiple unjust wars waged by the United States all over the world etc.
- kortilla 10mo agoGoogle doesn’t censor those atrocities for the US government. That’s the key difference.
- ssl-3 10mo agoIt's often fairly easy to find US government-centric news and criticism with Google. But as one counterexample: The end of the US penny was formed and announced not with public legislative discourse, nor even with an executive order, but with a brief social media post by the president. And I don't mean that it's atrocious or anything, but I wanted to see that social media post myself. Not a report about it, or someone's interpretation of it, but -- you know -- the actual utterance from the horse's mouth. Which should be a simple matter. After all, it's the WWW. And I've been Googling for as long as there has been a Google to Google with. I'd like to think that I am proficient at getting results from it. But it was like pulling teeth to get Google to eventually, kicking and screaming, produce a link to the original message on Truth Social. If that kind of active reluctance isn't censorship on Google's part, then what might it be described as instead? And if they're seeking to keep me away from the root of this very minor issue, then what else might they also be working to keep me from?
- parliament32 10mo agoI have yet to see any kind of censorship when querying Yandex, do you have any examples?
- DANmode 10mo agoNot overtly - and not all of the things the US as a whole may want. But Google does censor.
- super256 10mo agoYandex has the best image search, and others are years behind it. Further more Nebius has sold all group’s businesses in Russia and certain international market. They are completely divested from Russia for a 1.5 years already: https://nebius.com/newsroom/ynv-announces-successful-completion-of-the-divestment-of-its-russia-based-businesses https://nebius.com/newsroom/ynv-announces-successful-complet... The post you linked was posted when the divestment was already going underway, so it is at least dishonest if not malicious.
- cluckindan 10mo agoI wouldn’t trust a divorce where one party still provides for the other.
- _heimdall 10mo agoYou don't "trust" a divorce is alimony was part of the settlement?
- kortilla 10mo agoYep, when the party paying can decide not to pay and there are no teeth to extract payment, that gives immense power to the payer.
- _heimdall 10mo agoAt least in my area, there are legal avenues if alimony goes unpaid. Assets can be seized to pay off late payments and wages can be garnished. Its a different story if the payer truly can't afford to pay the alimony, but at that point they wouldn't have the immense power you are concerned with.
- varjag 10mo agoYandex is the government approved search engine in Russia, which is impossible without the state exerting control over it. I wouldn't pay much attention to divestment, it's not how any of that works. For instance here you can learn that Yandex NV is fully controlled by a group of Russian investors: https://www.rbc.ru/business/06/03/2024/65e7a0f29a7947609ea3945e https://www.rbc.ru/business/06/03/2024/65e7a0f29a7947609ea39...
- spIrr 10mo agoThank you. Didn't know that and was, until now, considering paying for a Kagi subscription.
- scotty79 10mo ago> "We do not discriminate based on current geopolitical issues." That's one way of phrasing it.
- artursapek 10mo agobased Vlad tbh
- Ferret7446 10mo agoI find this amusing, because it seems like Kagi's target audience dislikes this (politically polarized), and I as someone who is not Kagi's target audience likes this (politically neutral).
- embedding-shape 10mo agoWait, what? Their choice is specifically a politically neutral one, wouldn't that mean their target audience is a politically neutral one? Why is your impression that Kagi's target audience is politically polarized users? Been a paying user of Kagi for years, never got that impression. FWIW, I don't think Kagi should remove or avoid indexing content from countries that invade others, because a lot of the times websites in those countries have useful information on them. If Kagi were to enact such a block, it would mean it would no longer surface results from HN, reddit and a bunch of other communities, effectively making the search engine a lot less useful.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- bawolff 10mo agoPolitics is not just a 1 dimensional line.
- saturnite 10mo agoYeah, it's two dimensional. One axis goes from good to evil. The other axis, chaotic to lawful.
- Dilettante_ 10mo agoThere's a secret third dimension you can ascend to through a hole in the neutral middle where the forces of the other two axes cancel out. 'The Elites' doesn't want you to know this. /hj?
- justinclift 10mo ago
- duxup 10mo agoYeah I kept thinking "man I should try kagi" and then that :(
- akie 10mo agoTry it anyway.
- alessioalex 10mo agoHe probably doesn’t want to support genocide.
- richwater 10mo agoHope he doesn't pay his taxes then considering where US aid ends up
- duxup 10mo agoI pay my taxes, that's not optional. Paying search engine is.
- immibis 10mo ago[flagged]
- immibis 10mo agoInterestingly they flagged comments saying HN is based in the USA but not comments saying Google is based in the USA.
- duxup 10mo agoNaw, the well is poisoned and I question the company's decision making at this point.
- buellerbueller 10mo agoImo, Kagi is still the better option, because it isn't supporting the global surveillance mechanism we call advertising. All these people, missing the forest for the single yandex tree.
- stronglikedan 10mo agoMeh. Most people, including myself, couldn't care less, and Yandex image search is very capable.
- troyvit 10mo agoSo if America invades Venezuela should we all stop using google? Should we have stopped using google when the U.S. invaded Iraq and killed 150,000 people[1]? Should we stop using products imported from China for the cultural genocide they've perpetrated against the Uyghurs?[2] Is Yandex Russia? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_Chin...
- brendoelfrendo 10mo agoHonest answers are yes, yes, and yes. It may be unavoidable for the average person to avoid imported goods from China, but we should remain aware of our place in the world and try where we can. If the US does invade Venezuela, I sincerely hope that individuals and business owners try to cut as many ties with complicit US tech companies as possible. Honestly, with this clusterfuck of war crimes going on over "drug boats," I hope they're already starting.
- alessioalex 10mo agoYou can take whatever stand you want. When there’s a country that killed, raped and tried to exterminate most of Eastern Europe we can choose to cut any and all ties with it and consider them for all intents and purposes ..terrorists.
- mcv 10mo agoAnd the fact that there are other countries that should also be considered terrorists, doesn't mean we shouldn't boycott this one. It means we should boycott them all. But boycotting a few is still better than nothing.
- troyvit 10mo agoI sort-of see where you're coming from, but it also ignores a double standard to me. Don't buy search from a company that uses an api from another company that is (or was? unclear) based in a country that invaded another country and completely upended the world order. For some people that's a line that they don't want to cross and I get it. However if that's the case how can they continue buying Chinese products when China has done the same thing, but worse, and for longer, to their own population? Because it's less convenient to stop? _That_ to me lands squarely in the "take whatever stand you want" category with the addendum of, "and don't worry if it doesn't make sense." Is it because it's within their own borders and therefore isn't our problem?
- phantasmish 10mo agoI directly use Yandex sometimes, because there are huge blind spots for all the US-based engines I'm aware of, and it fills some of them in. If someone can point me to a better index for that purpose, I'd love to avoid Yandex. Please inform me.
- devmor 10mo agoKagi is based in the United States, as is YC. If you are concerned about heinous war crimes and the slaughter of civilians to the point that you don't want to use private services from countries that conduct such acts, you should avoid both already.
- immibis 10mo agoWhy's that something to be aware of? Yandex is actually a good search engine, so I'm told, as long as you don't search for things related to Russian politics. Kagi presumably knows this and won't use their results related to Russian politics. Feels more like a scare campaign to me - someone doesn't want you to use Kagi, and points to Yandex as a reason for that.
- Seattle3503 10mo agoI'm surprised this is possible given the sanctions on Russia.
- DontForgetMe 10mo agoI remain amazed by the lack of attention given to this. Regardless of one's position on the 'everything online is Russian propaganda, Russian bots or misinformation - invest in sickles and hammers, comrade / wtf just use basic common sense and the internet is as safe as it ever was' continuum, such universal enthusiasm for a Russian-owned, Russian-controlled search engine should generate a little more counter-argument, at the very least. Absolutely no mention of Google, Bing, Startpage, DDG, or even Mojeek search engines usually pass online without somebody detailing the problems, flaws, or why they're not as good as the alternatives. Usually, at least 20% of the comments will be overtly critical, with at least 1 person passionately arguing that this search engine is going to destroy life as we know it / funds genocide / is an abomination unto God. On open forums and spaces where a variety of users and tastes are represented, that minimum level of criticism usually applies to absolutely everything from movies to toothbrushing techniques to kids' TV to low-carb breakfasts. If more than 3 people care enough about something to discuss it, at least 1 of those people will hate it and feel the need to enunciate why. Except Kagi. Kagi must enjoy the highest praise-criticism ratio of anything I've ever seen on the web, including concepts like sunshine and heaven and the eradication of polio. Seriously. The only 'real' criticism I ever see of Kagi is like 'I personally don't like it because I don't think a search engine is worth more than $19.99' or 'unfortunately I need x feature', and it's always followed by a reply saying 'Ah, well Kagi is now available for $19.50' or 'you'll be thrilled to know that x feature can be enabled in Kagi by following these steps'. And the occasional 'I don't use it because it seemed a bit wierd and wasn't worth it' comment languishing on the outskirts of the discussion. So yeah. I do not expect this comment to stir much discussion, mainly because it's like 24 hours after the main debate and is on a pretty low-impact thread on hacker news from an uninspiring new ish account. But also because Kagi critical comments are written in sand, whatever the discussion or authority or audience. That should make people more suspicious.
- justinclift 10mo ago> But also because Kagi critical comments are written in sand, whatever the discussion or authority or audience. Maybe people just turn up too late and their comments generally aren't seen?
- xzjis 10mo agoI don't like defending Russia which is a horrible country, but I find it hypocritical to only talk about their imperialism and pretend not to see that the most imperialist country in the world, the one that has started, financed, and participated in the most wars, is the United States, and yet the question of boycotting American companies is never brought up. Google has been intentionally sabotaged in terms of image search and reverse image search; Yandex is literally the best on the market, but Kagi should boycott them because their headquarters are in the wrong country?
- dmitrygr 10mo agoWhat's your point? Yandex is a good place to search for things Google has been ordered to not show you. Has been for a decade by now.
- UltraSane 10mo agoYandex has the best reverse image search by a huge margin.
- dncornholio 10mo agoHow does Kagi know what is AI stuff? I don't see how they can 'just turn it off'
- Zambyte 10mo agoIt's driven by community ratings. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45919067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45919067
- pratyahava 10mo agoso it is like humans vs robots started? robots ask humans questions to verify they are not robots. humans mark content as robot-generated to filter it out.
- pvdebbe 10mo agoMy first instinct is that users abuse it like they do any other report/downvote mechanism. They see something they just don't plain like, they report it as AI slop.
- justinclift 10mo agoBy "turn it off" I mostly mean that Kagi have their own AI driven tools available, but a toggle in your user settings disables it completely. ie it's not forced down your throat, nor mysteriously/accidentally/etc turned back on occasionally
- mebizzle 10mo agoHaven't looked back since I signed up.
- tempacct2cmmnt 10mo agoI’ve had much better results with Kagi than with Google in the past few months. I’d trialed them a couple times in the past and been disappointed, but that’s no longer the case.
- PaulDavisThe1st 10mo agoThe AI stuff in google search can be turned off. https://www.google.com/search?udm=14&q=kagi My default browser search tool is set to google with ?udm=14 automatically appended.
- nailer 10mo agoWhat is UDM? Presumably the U is Urchin but what’s the rest?
- PaulDavisThe1st 10mo agoNever seen it documented.
- vivzkestrel 10mo agowhat if there was an open source search engine that contributors kept making better but it was a paid subscription tool?
- Maken 10mo agoThere is also the fact that automatically generated content predates ChatGPT by a lot. By around 2020 most Google searches already returned lots of SEO-optimized pages made from scrapped content or keyword soups made by rudimentary language models or markov chains.
- black3r 10mo agoWell there's also the fact that GPT-3 API was released in June 2020 and its writing capabilities were essentially on par with ChatGPT initial release. It was just a bit harder to use, because it wasn't yet trained to follow instructions, it only worked as a very good "autocomplete" model, so prompting was a bit "different" and you couldn't do stuff like "rewrite this existing article in your own words" at all, but if you just wanted to write some bullshit SEO spam from scratch it was already as good as ChatGPT would be 2 years later.
- gield 10mo agoAnd 10 years ago, Reddit was already experimenting with auto-generated subreddits: https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditSimulator https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditSimulator.
- PunchyHamster 10mo agoIt was popular way before 2020 but Google managed to keep up with SEO tricks for good decade+ before. Guess it got to breaking point.
- bratwurst3000 10mo agothe main theory is that with bad results you have to search more and get more engaged in ads so more revenue for google. Its enshitification
- master-lincoln 10mo agoI think this is about trustworthy content, not about a good search engine per se
- trinix912 10mo agoBut it's not necessarily trustworthy content, we had autogenerated listicles and keyword list sites before ChatGPT.
- GTP 10mo agoSure, but I think that the underlying assumption is that, after the public release of ChatGPT, the amount of autogenerated content on the web became significantly bigger. Plus, the auto-generated content was easier to spot before.
- robot-wrangler 10mo ago> Google made the search results worse here Did you mean: worse results near me are worse results worth it worse results net worth best worse results worse results reddit
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- d-lisp 10mo agosearch: Emacs Did you mean vim ? (vice-versa)
- ganzsz 10mo agoTbh, this sounds like a Google Easter egg.
- mghackerlady 10mo agoBecause it is
- zipy124 10mo agoHonestly the biggest failing is just SEO spam sites got too good at defeating the algorithm. The amount of bloody listicles or quora nonsense or backlink farming websties that come up in search is crazy.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- Nextgrid 10mo agoThis is bullshit the search engines want you to believe. It's trivial to detect sites that "defeat" the algorithm; you simply detect their incentives (ads/affiliate links) instead. Problem is that no mainstream search engine will do it because they happen to also be in the ad business and wouldn't want to reduce their own revenue stream.
- AznHisoka 10mo agoFor most commercial related terms, I suspect if you got rid of all “spanmy” results you would be left with almost nothing. No independent blogger is gonna write about the best credit card with travel points.
- eszed 10mo agoI agree with your point, but you picked a poor example. Have you met any credit reward min-maxers?
- baconbrand 10mo agoI had a coworker who kept up a blog about random purchases she’d made, where she would earn some money via affiliate links. I thought it was horrendously boring and weird, and the money made was basically pocket change, but she seemed to enjoy it. You might be surprised, people write about all sorts of things.
- asdff 10mo agoPeople used to do it early internet before affiliate marketing really took it over. Certainly it was more genuine and products were bemoaned for their compromises in one dimension as much as praised for their performance in another. Everything is a glowing review now and comparisons are therefore meaningless.
- groundzeros2015 10mo agoSignificant changes were made to Google and YouTube in 2016 and 2017 in response to the US election. The changes provided more editorial and reputation based filtering, over best content matching.
- benterix 10mo ago> if I search on Google search for specific terms, I am not interested in crap such as "others also searched for xyz" - that is just ruining the UI with irrelevant information You assume the aim here is for you to find relevant information, not increase user retention time. (I just love the corporate speak for making people's lives worse in various ways.)
- mcv 10mo agoYou finding relevant information used to be the aim. Enshittification started when they let go of that aim.
- 123malware321 10mo agoML and AI killed it between 2011-2016 somewhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory
- juujian 10mo agoThe problem is that before Nov 30, 2022 we also had plenty of human-generated slop bearing down on the web. SEO content specifically.
- ForHackernews 10mo agoGoodhart's law applies to links, too. Google monetized them and destroyed their value as a signal.
- jollyllama 10mo ago> The problem That's a separate problem. The search algorithm applied on top of the underlying content is a separate problem from the quality or origin of the underlying content, in aggregate.
- 0xEF 10mo ago> I am not 100% certain why Google decided to ruin google search. Ask Prabhakar Raghavan. Bet he knows.
- xnx 10mo agoCounterpoint: The experience of quickly finding succinct accurate responses to queries has never been better. Years ago, I would consider a search "failed" if the page with related information wasn't somewhere in the top 10. Now a search is "failed" if the AI answer doesn't give me exactly what I'm looking for directly.
- codyb 10mo agoI've been using DuckDuckGo for the last... decade or so. And it still seems to return fairly relevant documentation towards the top. To be fair, that's most of what I use search for these days is "<<Programming Language | Tool | Library | or whatever>> <<keyword | function | package>>" then navigate to the documentation, double check the versions align with what I'm writing software in, read... move on. Sometimes I also search for "movie showtimes nyc" or for a specific venue or something. So maybe my use cases are too specific to screw up, who knows. If not, maybe DDG is worth a try.
- geldedus 10mo agoDuckDuckGo uses Bing search results.
- salemh 10mo ago[dead]