6 ms·
Adieu google
- zackattack 17y agoI have been noticing a decline in Google's search results, _especially_ for computer-related help. Tons of awful blog posts, from years ago, created for AdSense money. Why can't Google [surreptitiously?] rank search results by actual relevancy (e.g. clicks & abandons)? And don't tell me because of voting rings: I have seen "voting ring detection" often as a common screening problem for job interviews.
- mcav 17y ago> Tons of awful blog posts, from years ago, This. While humanity has uploaded a lot of valuable, worthwhile information online in the past decade, that's just a blip compared to the amount of totally useless junk online. That makes things harder for all search engines. It also will be interesting to see how search engines cope with the internet as the number of websites/pages continues to grow in the next fifty or so years.
- NathanKP 17y agoEventually I suppose that we will see sites such as quality directories rise again. For example, a site dedicated specifically towards programming topics with links to known high quality programming articles. In a way I cope with that problem by searching for "keyword + name of site that I trust". For example "cross domain javascript fade quirksmode". It works better that way, but it assumes that you already know the names of major "solution providers."
- philwelch 17y agoThat behavior seems popular--most queries, Google Suggest appends "wiki" or "wikipedia" to as a popular search.
- NathanKP 17y agoThat is also probably why Google usually ranks Wikipedia so highly. And that is another solution. Google can make known, trusted websites such as About.com, Wikipedia, Quirksmode, rank highly. They already do that based on domain name age and link backs, and it is part of the reason why it is so hard to rank highly when you start a new site.
- dtby 17y agoGoogle can make known, trusted websites such as About.com, Wikipedia, Quirksmode, rank highly. I thought this is what PageRank was supposed to determine algorithmically. I don't trust two out of three of your listed trusted websites, so this would devalue their service to me. Then again, they probably don't care much what I think, since I switched search engines months ago.
- ericd 17y agoYeah, I think the domain name age is a real problem, since it creates a barrier to entry for new, better stuff, and slows down the evolution of the internet. Not sure how big the weight is, but combined with 10 years of link building, it can be very hard to topple a more established but inferior site.
- zackattack 17y agoI know it makes things harder, why can't they implement a suggestion like mine? People stop searching when they find what they're looking for. Oh, wait. The more searches they do, the more impressions they see. The more impressions they see, the more likely they are to click on an ad. More ad clicks, more money.
- cma 17y agoThey aren't subject to any competition that would counteract the incentive you mentioned?
- zackattack 17y agoThey can't be too greedy, or they'll lose business to competitors. They can't be too selfless, or they won't have the resources to do incredible things. Hypothesis: Price, efficiency, benefits to the consumer all oscillate over the years, never to converge, as competition naturally enter and exit the field.
- jordyhoyt 17y agoSorry for this to get all meta, but what is the meaning of saying "this" at the beginning of a comment? I've seen it elsewhere, sometimes as the entire response. I'm afraid I missed the beginnings of this convention, and it's not intuitive (at least to me).
- steerpike 17y agoIt's a shorthand for 'I totally agree and what was said bears repeating'. I think it originated on fark, but I'm not totally sure.
- telemachos 17y agoI thought we already had a way to say that: ditto.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- carbocation 17y agoThe original post asked a question: "Why can't Google [surreptitiously?] rank search results by actual relevancy (e.g. clicks & abandons)?" The respondent felt that the original post contained the answer to its own question. Therefore, the respondent said, "This," pointing to the answer.
- jordyhoyt 17y agoOk, I see now that the original poster was effectively saying "this is why", not necessarily using the "this" meme that I was confused about. Still, I got my answer and the post has been clarified for me. Thanks, guys.
- jamesbritt 17y ago" Therefore, the respondent said, "This," pointing to the answer." Shouldn't it then be "that", or have the quote come after "this"?
- pvandehaar 17y agoI try to avoid predictions in software further ahead than 30 years. I expect search will be rather unrecognizable by then. Just think back 50 years (PDP-10 and ITS 40 years ago; Apple and Unix at 30; Linux is 15).
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- gxs 17y agoI agree- the irony in google fighting for the next platform to be open regardless of what it is, is in google monetizing data that I would rather remain 100% private. Google is fast approacting too good to be true status, at least for me personally: I use google voice, gmail has become my primary email client (including letting it manage my own domain email), I use google docs to edit documents on the fly, and was probably one of the first people to download chrome and chrome os. That is far, far more information than I feel comfortable letting any one company have about me.
- derefr 17y agoThe other choice is simply spreading it between multiple companies. In the modern age, all that disparate data will eventually get centralized or aggregated somewhere, somehow, whether or not it's your choice to do so, that of the companies you're interacting with, your friends', your own employer's, or your government's.
- stcredzero 17y agoPerhaps someone can cook up a recipe involving some crypto protocols, and provide people with cloud services that are guaranteed to be private?
- alastair 17y agoI think the days of an invincible google are clearly over. Their brand is diluted (imho) with countless products, I think that at least for search - someone could beat them. Eg, If facebook bought or built a search engine, it could be 'game on'.
- nostrademons 17y agoFaceBook has a search engine, it's just that it's for searching your social life instead of the web.
- chronomex 17y agoDon't forget that they contract out web search to Bing. Try it, query for something on the Web with Facebook's search box. I always ignore it because it's noise -- when I go to Facebook I want to look for people, not essays or blog posts.
- unalone 17y agoIf they figure out how to market that better, though, they've got a massive userbase. That could be incredible.
- jfarmer 17y agoFacebook search returns web results, too. Not that the results are particularly relevant, but after Google it's probably the second-most viewed search box on the web. And you'll notice at the bottom it says "Powered by Bing."
- byrneseyeview 17y agoI also switched from Google to Duck Duck Go about a week ago. It's perfect for common terms, but I still switch to Google for the more obscure stuff. But it's not like Google in 1999. Search has gotten harder, and more expensive -- which is part of why Google is doing what they can to get a competitive advantage (by hoovering up more of your data) and exploiting it (by selling the data, displaying ads based on it, etc.).
- blinks 17y ago> ... (by selling the data, ...) ... http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacypolicy.html http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacypolicy.html -> grep Information Sharing.
- dangrossman 17y agoThey purposely restricted that section to "personal information". If they don't tie your web history to your persona, they are free to sell it or do whatever else they want with it.
- scorxn 17y agoI discovered the Google Accounts Dashboard today and had a similar reaction: https://www.google.com/dashboard?hl=en https://www.google.com/dashboard?hl=en On the one hand, once you sign over your email, you've signed over verification on any site. On the other, it's pretty jarring to see all the personal information (CC and address) and relational data (contacts, RSS subscriptions, purchase history) Google owns.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- sahaj 17y agoi'm not sure if this is over-reaction. * It's completely separate from your Google Account and Web History (which are only available to signed-in users). You'll know when we customize results because a "View customizations" link will appear on the top right of the search results page.
- simanyay 17y agoWhat stops anybody from deleting their web history data and disabling Web History thing altogether?
- bham 17y agoYou implicitly trust that it is deleted when you click that button?
- simanyay 17y agoI am not a fan of conspiracy theories.
- y0ghur7_xxx 17y agofrom http://www.google.com/searchhistory/privacy.html http://www.google.com/searchhistory/privacy.html "You can delete information from Web History using the remove feature, and it will be removed from the service. However, as is common practice in the industry, and as outlined in the Google Privacy Policy, Google maintains a separate logs system for auditing purposes and to help us improve the quality of our services for users."
- ubernostrum 17y agoThere are threat models which are useful, and there are threat models which lead you to wear a tinfoil hat. Which type of model are you basing your question on?
- RevRal 17y agoMy last straw was seeing the Chrome logo. I've always had the "they're watching you" thought running in the background of my mind. But, I have always ignored those thoughts. Then I saw the Chrome logo. To me, it very blatantly looks like an imposing robotic eye, watching every move. I said: screw this, too f'n much. And I, incidentally, also moved on and also use Duck Duck Go. But, I still use Google as a spell checker every once in a while. ---- Addendum: Google has the uncanny ability of making bad logos look nice. Link to robotic eye logo: http://www.gadgetzone.ro/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/chrome-logo.png http://www.gadgetzone.ro/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/chrome-l... .
- bithaze 17y agoI can understand anyone who's worried about the privacy concerns of using Google products. But leaving them just because of a logo? That does seem like the over-reaction sahaj mentioned.
- aw3c2 17y agoIt was not the logo that made him leave. It made him realise that he wants to leave. edit: Huh? I upvoted your comment because I felt it was a somewhat valid question but the site still shows it at 0. Well, maybe someone downvoted just in the same second. Unlikely though.
- bham 17y agoHow can you have mistaken the Chrome logo for an evil robotic eye when it was engineered to resemble everyone's happy childhood game Simon http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&um=1&sa=1&q=simon+milton+bradley&aq=f&oq=&aqi=&start=0 http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&client=firefox-a&#... Come on in, the water's warm.
- andreyf 17y agoYeah, because the logo of a fully open-source browser is totally reasonable. Well, it's probably as reasonable as freaking out over 180-day anonymous cookies that improve your search results.
- DanBlake 17y agoAm I missing something? Why using duckduckgo? The only mention I have seen of it is a paid ad they bought on reddit. Is there any reason they are better than the plethora of existing alternatives? Do they even maintain their own index, or are they a scraper?
- warp 17y agoI reported an issue to them via e-mail on saturday. Got a response on sunday, I added some details, and it was fixed a few hours after their first response. they're still small, they still listen to feedback.
- stcredzero 17y agoHow would one combine everything good about something like "Search Engine as a Startup" with everything good about "A Company like Google?" Could we have an ad & donation supported open source search engine running on top of AWS or Google Apps? (Yes, the 2nd one would be ironic, if even allowed to exist by Google.) Perhaps this would be a way to combine the responsiveness of Duck Duck Go or the early Google with the infrastructure and computational horsepower of Google/Bing ca. 2009?
- mlinsey 17y agoI'm pretty sure they use Yahoo BOSS, plus some in-house stuff that merges info from trusted sites like Wikipedia. Yahoo's results are pretty good, though I hope that BOSS-based sites survive whatever the fallout of the Yahoo-MS search deal ends up being. Personally I've found that the extra features on top of Yahoo's results that DDG gives aren't usually very useful, but it's nice and fast with a simple, usable interface. For the few weeks I had it as my Firefox search box default, the only thing I felt was missing was how Google includes results from Google News and Image Search right on your search results page. Also, the founder of DDG posts here on HN, which is one reason why you'll hear about it around here more often than other places. Curious, what do you think the plethora of other alternatives are? I've been pretty unimpressed by the small search engines trying to use their own indexes (Cuill) and even less impressed by the "human-powered" engines (Mahalo). I haven't seen anyone else really come close to Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask.
- benatkin 17y agoI'm tired of google's stemmer getting in the way of doing specific searches. Even quotes won't keep it from showing results that are the same except for having an s dropped or added. It's frustrating at times. It was bad enough not being able to search for strings. What I'd really like is an uncrippled search engine that lets people be very specific in their searches. I'd really like support for simple regexes.
- jcapote 17y agoI was just thinking about this the other day while trying to search for $HOME (impossible to get even ONE unix-related result, no matter how you quote it).
- nfnaaron 17y agoWhen I searched for $HOME on google, the result page had this: "See results for: $home unix" Which leads to this: http://www.google.com/search?q=%24home+unix http://www.google.com/search?q=%24home+unix I.e. if you want a unix-related result, say unix.
- jacobolus 17y agoUse the '+' character. http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=136861 http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer...
- jcapote 17y agohttp://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%2B$HOME&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g2g-s2g1g-s1g4 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%2B$HOME&aq=f&#... still doesn't work...
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- Sandman 17y agoFor comparison, here's what ddg comes up with: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=%24HOME&v= http://duckduckgo.com/?q=%24HOME&v=
- known 17y agoBuild your own Google http://www.archive.org/iathreads/post-view.php?id=243665 http://www.archive.org/iathreads/post-view.php?id=243665
- garply 17y agoI've been stuck behind the Chinese firewall for a while now and while I do proxy for searches that clearly need it, I surf most of my web unproxied. For whatever reason, the firewall seems to arbitrarily and frequently block many of my (non-risque and non-politically-sensitive) Google queries. The end result is that I've been using a whole lot of Bing. Aside from my habit of using Google as my default search tool, I don't see much reason in terms of performance for me to stick with them. As it is, I will likely be switching my default search engine to Bing once I figure out how to do it in Chrome.
- pietro 17y agoType "bing.com" in the address bar, hit Tab instead of Enter and search for anything. Open Options from the tool menu. On the Basic tab, locate "Default search" and click the Manage button. In the list of "Other search engines", select bing.com and click Make Default.
- garply 17y agoThanks! I had been putting it off because the last time I tried to configure Chromium on Linux for something (a Socks 5 proxy) it was very unfriendly.
- tybris 17y agoGoogle has focussed too much on common searches (the money makers). They have had so little competition that they forgot that people select their search engine based on specific searches.
- mark_l_watson 17y agoI hear you. I am still a "google fan," specifically I have a business idea I want to implement on top of Wave, and I plan on continuing using GMail. That said, I switched my default Firefox search to Clusty yesterday. This morning, I searched for a vendor of old Rudger Mark II magazines/clips. I clicked on a paid link, and ended up spending a fair amount of money. Clusty got a profit slice that Google would have got if their privacy issues had not caught my attention. The sci-fi author David Brin (a cool guy, BTW) advocates for no privacy as long as everyone has an equal amount of "non privacy" - the problem as I see it is the corporations, who profit by knowing everything about you via discount cards at supermarkets, the web, etc. I'll stop complaining when we have the ability to know private corporate details, have congress people have to wear Nascar-like advertisements on their clothes, etc.
- JulianMorrison 17y agoThey want to put a random cookie on your browser and link it to your search preferences. Oh my goodness, how horribly bad of them! Yes, Google knows all your secrets (even if you never went online, they'd probably have enough data from your contact with the rest of the world to reconstruct a profile). No, they have not shown any inclination to misuse this information. Privacy is dead - luckily, it was killed by Google and not MSN. Welcome to the 21st century, learn to cope.