[HN Gopher] Google pays 'enormous' sums to maintain search-engin...
___________________________________________________________________
Google pays 'enormous' sums to maintain search-engine dominance,
DOJ says
Author : helsinkiandrew
Score : 242 points
Date : 2022-09-09 11:02 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| https://archive.ph/pfQWv
| fareesh wrote:
| Google search results have become quite terrible over the past
| few years.
|
| Have important people on the search team moved on?
| phpthrowaway99 wrote:
| Yes, but the new team is diverse and equitable.
| [deleted]
| spaghettiToy wrote:
| I know I should hate google for some reason, but despite the SEO
| spam, they are still better than bing and duck duck go.
|
| I think my cocktail of degoogled Google products + adblock
| solutions + being that person who doesn't care about privacy has
| made Google 'fine'.
|
| I avoid using Google products unless they are FOSS. I'm not going
| to get screwed by "play music" or similar again.
|
| Out of FAAMG, I think I like Google the best. But that doesn't
| say much.
| rentfree-media wrote:
| I don't think you have evaluated the quality of your results
| from Google very carefully.
|
| Research is part of my job. I routinely find things on Google
| that I circle back to later to check up on and find that
| they've disappeared (not things disparaging to anyone that one
| would be motivated to get off of google, talking about things
| just disappearing for inexplicable reasons).
|
| For the first time in a decade, during the past year I have
| started using alternative search engines because the quality of
| Google results is _bad_.
| tuckerman wrote:
| Perhaps we are searching in different domains or have
| different expectations but I haven't had the same experience.
| I use DDG as my primary search engine but very often I end up
| adding !g to get to results that are usable and it's to the
| point where for a lot of things I !g straight from the start.
| mellavora wrote:
| Haven't had the experience of things disappearing off of
| google?
|
| Of things which were a top result a year ago but now show
| on page 20?
|
| What domains are you searching on??? Google explicitly
| personalized your search results, which means it is
| intentionally presenting different results with every
| search.
|
| Google might be your current best option, but that doesn't
| discredit the poster's view.
| tuckerman wrote:
| I've not experienced any of the things which you describe
| and I find personalization to be generally valuable. I
| also think its less personalized than many people believe
| it to be. (Disclaimer: I used to work at Google/Alphabet
| but not on Search).
|
| I didn't say Google was the best for everyone all of the
| time, just for me most of the time. I just didn't agree
| that anyone that uses Google hasn't carefully evaluated
| the quality of the results: I intentionally made an
| alternative my default and, despite it being harder for
| me to use Google now, I still fall back to it more often
| than not.
| rentfree-media wrote:
| Perhaps, in my case in some of these cases I remember
| wording / sentences explicitly that I can recite from
| memory, or failing that, I surely remember a string of
| keywords that will only appear in a handful of articles.
|
| And like I said, it's not uncommon to find something on
| Google one day and have it just gone six months later.
| threads2 wrote:
| Same! the google maps m! is just too good for me not to use
| DDG. (does Google have an equivalent?)
| [deleted]
| kayson wrote:
| I've long since switched to DDG nearly exclusively and I've
| rarely felt like I am unable to find what I'm looking for. When
| I can't, I switch to Google (easily using DDG's !g bang) and
| almost always can't find it there either.
| badrabbit wrote:
| Ddg works for me for technical searches, google is better for
| digging up stuff though. I default to ddg but use google as
| needed.
| ErrrNoMate wrote:
| DuckDuckGo is Bing.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > I know I should hate google for some reason
|
| I've come around a bit, after getting asked at an interview:
| "So, why no apply at Google?". Google doesn't align with my
| personal values. They contribute a great deal to our industry,
| they provide good jobs to a large number of people and they
| have a number of good products, like GCP.
|
| My problem with Google is they reliance on ads. It's not a
| model I wish to support. It damages they primary product,
| search (well, I mean, their primary product is ads now), and
| damages their credibility and overall brand. We haven't been
| able to trust product like Chrome or Android for years.. That
| is they choice, but I don't have support it, or help them build
| these products. Not that I think they'd hire me.
|
| But I don't hate Google, they're just not particular relevant
| to me anymore. Other search engines provide just as good
| searches. DuckDuckGo happens to be a little better and have a
| better interface than Bing or Ecosia, even if they're all "just
| Bing".
| hackernewds wrote:
| What's wrong with ads? What is another better system?
| mellavora wrote:
| It isn't a problem with ads. The problem is the
| misalignment between the business model and the product,
| and also the misalignment between the business model and
| the main users of the system.
|
| Another better system? Look at the early days of Google,
| they never would have gotten off the ground without very
| generous support from academia and specifically their
| university. What if it had been kept a university-based
| product?
|
| And yes, it could have reached its current search capacity
| and still remained a Stanford-based initiative. Stanford
| has the resources. We might not have gotten any of the
| other google products out of that, but Google seems to
| cancel them all anyway, so I don't see a huge difference.
| lrem wrote:
| Does Stanford actually have that kind of resources?
| Based, say, on Randal Munroe's estimation of Google's
| capacity?
| joshuamorton wrote:
| You can get a better estimate from Google's CapEx in it's
| financials.
|
| Stanford's endowment is ~30 billion. Google's CapEx is
| ~20 billion a year and has been for the last 4 years or
| so. You can weasel about exactly how much of that is
| attributable to search as opposed to other initiatives,
| (but even if you look back a decade to when Google was
| mostly search, it was running a CapEx of ~5
| billion/year). So even making pretty favorable
| estimations, you'd be looking at Stanford being bankrupt
| around now.
| [deleted]
| mrweasel wrote:
| For some products it's obviously a fine system. A majority
| of people will never pay for a search engine, or social
| media, so ads are a good way to pay for those services.
|
| Where I think companies, such as Google or Meta, goes off
| the deep end, is the amount of money you can realistically
| extract from advertising, without compromising your
| product. Both Google and Meta (much to my surprise) are
| extremely wealthy, but at the cost of what I'd call decency
| or morale. Both could have fine products and successful
| business, but somewhat smaller, and be financed by ads.
|
| If you look back that the original Google ads, where they
| not successful? They certainly seemed to pay the bills back
| them. My point is: If your company is financed by
| advertising, you need to accept that there's a limit to
| your potential growth, if you still want to be view in an
| overall positive light.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Yes, there is a limit on how many ads they can show to
| you without deteriorating user experience but sometimes
| they just don't care. They think like this: Q2 results
| were weaker than expected, let's show more ads to users
| in order to boost our Q3 results.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| > Other search engines provide just as good searches.
|
| That's just plain false. Perhaps better stated is you're
| tolerant to the results provided by alternatives.
|
| I tried DDG for a few months and found myself having to re-
| run my query on Google 60-70% of the time. It was an annoying
| experience.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Try DDG browser on your phone. That was what got me over to
| the other side. After few unsuccessful attempts on the
| desktop.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > That's just plain false.
|
| I think it's subjective. If 90% of your results are ads,
| then it's not actually better. What I believe it boils down
| to is what you search for, and slightly how you search.
| Personally I'm at a point now that if DDG can't find
| something, then neither can Google. The difference is that
| Google will yank out the primary keyword, if it thinks that
| will yield results, but those are obviously always wrong.
|
| Some things are unsearchable on bother DDG and Google,
| topics like weightloss, have just been SEO'ed to death and
| are no longer available online. Others maybe two ads on
| DDG, but an entire page on Google.
| cpeterso wrote:
| I've used DDG for 5+ years. Its results used to be mixed,
| but for the last 2-3 years, its results are good. I only
| fall back to Google for less than 2% (1 in ~50) searches,
| though I do rely a lot on DDG's !bang searches that
| redirect to specific sites for different technical topics.
| But I don't see that as a failing of DDG. When I do fall
| back to Google, it's for "needle in a haystack" searches.
| lofatdairy wrote:
| >FAAMG
|
| Is that with Netflix swapped with Microsoft? If that's the
| case, we might as well change the entire acronym to GAMMA to
| account for the Facebook -> Meta rename.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Or we could simply not comply with their attempt to launder
| their reputation, and keep calling them Facebook.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| No. FAANG is basically an eponym at this point. The companies
| that make up the acronym are irrelevant and they'll change
| overtime but the idea doesn't.
|
| "FAANG is an acronym for the five best-performing American
| tech stocks in the market"
| __derek__ wrote:
| FAANG: Five Assets Appreciating 'N' Growing
| sseagull wrote:
| I remember when there were The Four Horsemen (apparently
| even two versions):
|
| Around 2000, it was Microsoft, Intel, Dell, Cisco
|
| Later, around 2007, it was Apple, RIMM (Research in
| Motion/Blackberry), Google, Amazon
|
| Source:
| https://247wallst.com/media/2007/06/06/cramers_new_fou/
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| F*** the MMAAAN:
|
| Meta
|
| Microsoft
|
| Alphabet
|
| Apple
|
| Amazon
|
| Netflix
| mrkramer wrote:
| Google is no longer place where do you go to find useful
| information and good websites. First page of Google Search
| results is always a mix of popular websites like WSJ, NYT, BBC,
| Guardian, Reuters, Forbes, Bloomberg or any other famous and
| popular site like for example Reddit and other part of the mix
| are some low quality, spammy, copy-paste content random sites
| that are of no real use. Google prefers popular information
| instead of useful information and on top of that nobody really
| knows how exactly Google's ranking algorithms work not even
| Google's engineers but general rule is like I said popular
| content must be on the first page.
|
| One thing I like about Google tho is their Knowledge Graph[0]
| because I can type keywords like time, temperature or convert
| in the search box and Google will do this small task for me. I
| see it as a set of little web apps on top of Google which help
| us users to automate our tasks.
|
| [0]
| https://support.google.com/knowledgepanel/answer/9787176?hl=...
| MBCook wrote:
| To a degree that's Google's fault.
|
| Every person doing a search is a data point. Every result they
| go to is a signal. You can use that information to do a better
| job of providing relevant hits to good quality websites.
|
| Google is good -> gets more traffic -> gets more signals ->
| Google gets better faster.
|
| Everyone could do that. But Google gets the most traffic. They
| have the most popular browser. The most popular phone OS on
| earth. And they pay for that same advantage from the only other
| popular phone/tablet OS.
|
| If someone else was the default search on iOS they could
| improve much faster than they do today and be a bigger threat
| to Google.
|
| So Google pays.
| brightball wrote:
| I've given week at a time committed tries to several other
| search engines at this point.
|
| I tried Kagi, DDG, Bing and Brave Search. I was surprised that
| I kept getting good results from Brave. Still using it and
| generally don't need to look elsewhere for most searches.
|
| The others were more of a mixed bag.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| DDG and brave have been my default search engines for the
| past couple years. Despite that, only 2 of my last 10 or so
| searches weren't followed up with !g.
|
| Take the last search ("bronze patina thickness"), where I
| wanted to know how thick a typical bronze patina is. The
| first brave result is a hardware store in Spokane (not even
| my state!) that sells door latches. The rest of the page is
| SEO content about watches.
|
| The first result on Google links a paper and the results
| excerpt tells me 40-50um, up to 70um with prolonged exposure.
| The performance still isn't close for me despite the clear
| decline in Google search quality over the years.
| knoebber wrote:
| Results from
| https://kagi.com/search?q=bronze+patina+thickness
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patina
|
| 2. https://www.adamsbronze.com/bronze-patinas/
|
| 3. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/materials-
| science/patin...
|
| 3a. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S
| 23524...
|
| 4. https://www.corrosionpedia.com/important-facts-you-
| might-not...
|
| 5. https://www.accurateimageinc.com/CutMetals/Finish_CutBrn
| zPat...
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| DDG has been falling down in the past week with "no
| results" showing up frequently for trivial searches.
| lcampbell wrote:
| Are you using the no-javascript version ("HTML" version),
| by any chance? If so, you might find the "fully-featured"
| version has better^W results, at the cost of requiring
| Javascript and all that entails.
| vic-traill wrote:
| > I was surprised that I kept getting good results from Brave
|
| Agreed. I'm expecting the Brave Index to let me down almost
| every time I use it, however it does a pretty good job.
|
| I don't find the _same_ results, but I see _good_ results.
| wizofaus wrote:
| I suspect those who find the alternatives effective aren't
| using search engines the way I and many other users are:
| asking a specific question to which there is a definitive
| answer that we expect Google to know. In almost every case I
| ask such a question, Google comes up with the goods, whereas
| the others (Brave especially) often do not, or at best the
| answer is buried somewhere in one of the first few pages
| found.
|
| Edit: I just signed up for and tried Kagi. Strangely it seems
| to do well for searches based on my current physical location
| (despite never explicitly granting it permission to make use
| of that) but if I qualify my questions with "in America", not
| so well. But definitely better than DDG/Brave.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Since you've seen me elsewhere in this thread, you might have
| pegged as "google fanboy."
|
| Not a bit of it. I go out of my way to use DDG and it's
| almost always adequate. I said "almost."
|
| I haven't tried the others you mentioned.
| devin wrote:
| Dedicated Kagi user here. It is extremely rare that I !g or
| use another engine. Not affiliated with them in any way, but
| I like to plug them when I can as I really enjoy a model that
| isn't ad-supported. It's a great product IMO.
| brightball wrote:
| I enjoyed Kagi too. I think it has a lot of promise fwiw.
| bergenty wrote:
| I don't hate google, I like their product and everything about
| the company to be honest including the fact that they regularly
| kill off products. Do I miss the products? Yes but I like the
| churn and the idea that multiple teams are working on similar
| products.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| I like Duckduckgo - it is my default search and I haven't felt
| the need to try other searches in a while.
| docandrew wrote:
| DDG results are a little "different" than Google's but no
| worse. Like somebody else said, usually when DDG can't find
| the answer neither can Google.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > they are still better than bing and duck duck go.
|
| I'm not so sure about that. I just had to use Bing to find more
| information about this. Google kept showing me old news.
| Curious
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I find it interesting that you don't like Google Play Music
| (now called YouTube Music). You didn't like the rebranding? The
| Google products I like: YouTube, YouTube Music, and GCP (my
| favorite hosting platform). For search, I usually use DDG -
| good enough for me.
| jdeaton wrote:
| GPM to YTM wasnt wasn't a rebranding, its a completely
| different (and much worse) product.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Where can I find the actual information from the DOJ about this?
|
| Also:
|
| > a lawsuit from 2014 revealed that Google paid Apple $1 billion
| to be the main search engine on iPhone
|
| Why does it take a lawsuit to discover these cashflows? Google
| can pay Apple billions and nobody knows until there is a lawsuit?
| nickff wrote:
| Everyone knew that Google was paying Apple, they just didn't
| know exactly how much.
| phpthrowaway99 wrote:
| My personal moment when I realized Google isn't as smart as I
| thought, came from searching phone numbers.
|
| A number calls me.
|
| I type in the number with spaces to Google to try and find it. No
| results. Nothing.
|
| I add dashes. Results come up.
|
| I put the area code in parentheses, different results come up.
|
| If google can't figure out how to search 9 digit numbers against
| phone numbers correctly, I'm not sure I can trust them for
| anything.
| abraham wrote:
| Identifying something as a phone number is very difficult.
| https://github.com/google/libphonenumber/blob/master/FALSEHO...
| phpthrowaway99 wrote:
| Those things are all true, but if I search Google for: 510
| 555 1212 It shouldn't take massive AI and 25 phds to find a
| result for a company that lists 510-555-1212 as their phone
| number.
|
| Ok maybe it does. But it's not like Google is a startup and
| they haven't had time to get around to it.
|
| And add in the fact that if I do search 510 555-1212 I really
| wish they could atleast bring up (510) 555-1212.
|
| I guess for now I'll give them a pass on 510.555.1212
| wildrhythms wrote:
| I was under the impression spam callers in particular actively
| randomize and spoof their numbers.
| phpthrowaway99 wrote:
| They definitely do. But I'm usually searching the number of
| real people I talked to that put in a lead. Eventually I can
| find something usually, I just have to try various forms of
| formatting usually.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Wow, you're smarter than I am, or at least more persistent. I
| ran into the same thing and I figured it was some sort of
| privacy issue or something and just switched to looking the
| numbers up on Bing. Pretty sure it used to work to google
| numbers without the dashes.
| gernb wrote:
| I'm curious how much other major brands pay to stay in their
| places
|
| Coke arguably pays megabucks to have giant displays in prime
| locations. Those locations have limited space so Coke taking up
| one is
|
| Similarly, IIUC, companies pay to have their products put in
| conspicuous places in stores like Walmart, Target, etc. Only rich
| companies can afford to always get the spots that stick out the
| most.
|
| I don't know if those are compariable. Google pays Apple to be
| the default search engine seems no different than Coke paying to
| be the first soda on the aisle or to be featured on the edge of
| the aisle. People are still free to pick a different search
| engine or go into the soda aisle.
|
| Of course in retail another tactic is to make a bunch of products
| that appear to be different but are all basically the same. I
| think Crest or Colgate and 15 kinds of mouthwash all of which
| have the same "active ingredient" at the same concentration. The
| goal is to fill up the shelves with your products so there is no
| room left for the competition's products since shelf space is
| limited.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It would be like if Pepsi paid Coke billions to not make soda.
| Or if Coke paid Walmart billions to not sell or make their own
| soda.
|
| They are paying them to not compete. Isn't that the definition
| of antitrust?
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| Coke gives Disney unlimited free beverages as long as they only
| sell coke products in their parks
| NavinF wrote:
| Sounds like bullshit and at least one site agrees with my
| intuition:
|
| > Legend: Because of the advertising value of having its
| products featured at Disney theme parks, Coca Cola provides
| Disneyland with all of its beverage products free of charge.
|
| >Behind the Legend: This is true, but highly misleading. For
| years, Coke has had an advantage over rival Pepsi because it
| provides its products free of charge to all of its customers.
| The company makes up the loss by requiring that beverages
| only be sold in official cups or containers -- and charging
| an enormous amount for those contains. The container charge
| is based on a sliding scale depending on the customer.
| Individual consumers, purchasing beverages at a grocery or
| convenience store, pay only a few cents for the can or bottle
| in which their beverage comes. At the other end of the scale,
| movie theaters and theme parks like Disneyland pay as much as
| $2.00 for a single drink cup, making the exorbitant prices
| charged for drinks at those locations completely
| understandable.
| bsimpson wrote:
| I wonder if this is why stores are assholes when you want a
| glass of water, and they give you the dinkiest cup.
| hmate9 wrote:
| If they didn't pay so much then Bing or Yahoo would pay a
| slightly smaller amount to be the default and not Google. Would
| that be fair?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| So it's okay for me to rob you, because if I dont do it, the
| next criminal will?
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Its not the money so much as the methods. Though the money does
| keep it out of reach.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I thought Yahoo shows Bing search results.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Correct. Yahoo! Search is powered by Bing.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search
| gausswho wrote:
| If we're going for fair how about outlawing search engine
| defaults since they've proven to lead to unreasonable
| competitive advantage.
| andsoitis wrote:
| What's the alternative?
|
| During setup you have to choose amongst hundreds of options,
| e.g. does "you.com" make the list?
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Browsers don't have to have default search engines built-in
| at all. They didn't used to.
| musictubes wrote:
| Huh, I wonder what the effect would be if integrating
| search into the browser was outlawed. Short term I don't
| think much would change but long term? Dunno...
| Closi wrote:
| Well it could be a small list chosen by Firefox as a result
| of an honest selection of the best options their users
| would most likely want, rather than just defaulting to the
| megacorp that bribed them with the most money.
|
| But I'm really solutionising here, and I'm sure some of the
| worlds brightest engineers can come up with a solution
| thats better for users than "we default to whoever pays us
| the most money".
| kornhole wrote:
| Let's create an extension that merely prompts for the URL
| of your desired search engine. On confirm, it makes all
| the technical browser settings to set as default.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Maybe those engines could all bid on an annual basis to be
| positioned higher in the rankings? /s :)
| n4r9 wrote:
| Not sure what you're getting at; ideally they're subject to the
| same anti-trust legislation as Google. The fact that others
| might also try to break the law doesn't make it pointless to
| uphold the law.
| rendaw wrote:
| We're in a weird world where we're asking if it's okay for the
| public to be harmed because a company with lots of money (that
| they earned from the public) is paying another company lots of
| money.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Changing a default search engine is extremely easy and cheap.
| I struggle to define it as "harm".
|
| Should a person not be expected to be able to do that much?
| bogwog wrote:
| The issue is on competition. Nobody can really change
| consumer behavior, but we can regulate businesses to ensure
| the free market remains fair and competitive.
| pydry wrote:
| In theory it is and yet the extremely high price Google is
| willing to pay to keep it default suggests that it's harder
| than it looks.
|
| Plenty of non techies are deathly afraid of changing any
| settings. Google is paying a high price to erect an
| artificial barrier to entry against less well capitalized
| competitors looking to target them.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Google paying a high price suggests people will not
| change the default. It does not suggest changing the
| default is hard.
|
| People may not change the default because they
|
| 1. find it too difficult
|
| 2. they do not believe they are negatively effected by
| not changing the default
|
| 3. they do not even know it is a choice
|
| 4. or they prefer Google.
|
| Going into 2022, I would rather governments focus on
| educating people how to use computing devices than
| nannying them by barring two businesses from engaging in
| business. #1 thru #3 can be changed via public education,
| or even requiring more transparency from search engines
| to make comparing them easier.
|
| The physical actions of changing the default are not
| hard.
| pydry wrote:
| >Going into 2022, I would rather governments focus on
| educating people
|
| Yes, thats what most corporations engaged in abusive or
| anticompetitive business practices say. Credit card
| companies rake in the dough from abusive interest rates
| and then feign an interest in helping "educate" the
| consumers out of being exploited by them to keep
| regulators off their back and the senators they purchase
| do the same.
|
| Rinse and repeat, feigning concern for "financial
| literacy" for 30 years with nothing changing because
| nothing was _supposed_ to. The system was "working".
|
| I say put the regulators on their backs. If a business
| transaction is bad for the public then f*king prohibit
| it. End of story. "Educating users" out of avoiding
| abusive practices isnt _meant_ to work.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >If a business transaction is bad for the public then
| f*king prohibit it.
|
| If only life were that easy. Is it bad for the public
| that Costco and Walmart deliver lower prices to customers
| via efficiencies if scale? Or is it better to have more
| inefficient local stores?
| pydry wrote:
| >Is it bad for the public that Costco and Walmart deliver
| lower prices to customers via efficiencies if scale?
|
| Obviously not. Whereas if they could pay local
| governments money to keep the other one out so they could
| jack up prices that would be bad.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is not obvious to me. Maybe it is better for a society
| to have redundancies in supply chains and business
| operations. Or having businesses spread out through a
| region as opposed to conglomerated in a few spots with
| big box stores.
|
| Or maybe it is worth the lower prices. Or maybe it is not
| in society's best interest if Walmart is so big they can
| force suppliers to cut quality to meet their prices.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _Going into 2022, I would rather governments focus on
| educating people how to use computing devices than
| nannying them by barring two businesses from engaging in
| business. #1 thru #3 can be changed via public education,
| or even requiring more transparency from search engines
| to make comparing them easier._
|
| Google/Microsoft/etc will donate tons of hardware and
| software to public schools to ensure teaching kids to use
| their products become the lesson plan. They're already
| doing this; they pay schools to be the default just like
| they pay Mozilla to be the default.
|
| So you still have to solve the same sort of problem,
| except _" company donates computers to school"_ sounds
| like a sort of charity and that makes it relatively
| politically unassailable.
| danskeren wrote:
| Changing the default search engine is incredibly difficult
| and sometimes even impossible.
|
| It's in fact so difficult that you'll have an easier time
| getting people to use your search engine if you ask them to
| install your extension or even your own browser.
|
| If you want somewhat fair competition that's 'easy and
| cheap' then it should be possible to prompt for user
| permission to change the default search engine on any
| browser. It should be possible to avoid abuse by
| restricting the search engine change to the domain
| requesting the change.
| bagacrap wrote:
| I disagree with the premise, but if you really think
| changing the default is so hard, that seems like FF's
| fault, not Google's.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| If its so easy, then why is google paying so much for it?
| You think they are stupid and they aren't getting their
| money's worth?
|
| You can't have it both ways - simultaneously argue that
| market is efficient and we should let it do it's own
| thing, and that market is stupid to pay for defaults
| because changing them is so easy.
| danskeren wrote:
| It's just as hard on Chrome and every other browser. So
| far I've yet to meet a single non-developer capable of
| changing their default search engine to my website
| without my help.
|
| Try changing the default search engine on iOS Safari to
| some search engine that Apple hasn't hardcoded into their
| settings (e.g. https://ask.moe, https://search.brave.com,
| etc).
| kornhole wrote:
| This seems to be by design and influenced by the funding.
| Many search providers created an extension as the easiest
| path for end users. Most users don't seem to even
| understand the difference between a browser and search
| engine.
| mrkramer wrote:
| There should be government regulation around - according
| to which criteria internet browsers are offering their
| users default search engines. So for example if I make
| new internet search engine how do I get Apple and Google
| to offer it in their browsers as default search engine.
| Because it seems like Apple and Google are doing it on
| voluntary basis of good will not because government or
| anybody else told them to do so.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Firefox making it easy to change the default (or worse,
| prompting the user on first-run with some choices) would
| devalue the default. That default is how Mozilla makes
| money, so I don't expect them to address this any time
| soon.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Google is responsible for almost all of FF's income, so
| this is a distinction without a difference.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Wouldn't it be really good for google if the DOJ banned paying
| for default placement? I mean it seems like an untenable result
| to say that anyone but google can pay for default placement. So
| if paying for default is not okay, then that just saves google a
| lot of money (since google knows most people will pick them if
| presented a slate of options).
| freediver wrote:
| What would a fair default option be?
| pessimizer wrote:
| Any choice made that doesn't involve a kickback.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Either letting the user choose, or the developers setting a
| default (ideally with the interests of their users in mind).
| Of course, the latter is subject to interpretation, and a
| privacy-focused application might make a different choice
| than standard consumer products.
| matt_attack wrote:
| If they knew most people would pick them, then why are they
| paying?
| eloisant wrote:
| To prevent their competitors for making deals to be the
| default.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Bingo. Google is less paying for default placement and more
| paying so that they aren't locked out by default.
| bigyikes wrote:
| Most people would pick Google if there was no default option.
|
| Most people don't change the default option though. If Google
| didn't (or couldn't by law) pay such large sums, someone else
| (e.g. Bing) would pay a bit less and become the default. Even
| though most people prefer Google over Bing, there is still a
| significant incumbent advantage for being the default option.
| superkuh wrote:
| It's a shame that google never returns more than 400 results (num
| results per page * num pages < 400). Maybe if they spent some
| money on actually better and more search they wouldn't need to
| spend so much on buying markets.
| [deleted]
| O__________O wrote:
| Apple for sure would have already built or acquired a search
| engine if it was not for Google giving them billions to stay on
| the iPhone.
| fareesh wrote:
| An apple search engine oh man I wonder what that would be like
|
| "To list your site on Apple please submit your DUNS number and
| pay the $100 annual fee?"
| paulcole wrote:
| I'm not so sure about this. Apple doesn't (seem to) mind
| killing off sources of revenue by doing something new.
| treis wrote:
| That's the interesting thing about this. It's an open question
| of which monopolist is abusing their power here. Apple
| threatening to use their iPhone monopoly to bully their way
| into search or Google paying off Apple to forestall
| competition.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Apple did build a search engine, but it doesn't look like
| Google on the front end, it looks like a set of features in
| Siri, Maps, iOS, MacOS, etc.
| O__________O wrote:
| Google's deal with Apple is specifically for iPhone's built
| in web browser. Apple was working on a web search engine, but
| killed it off after Google renewed their deal the first time.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Apple was working on a web search engine, but killed it
| off after Google renewed their deal the first time._
|
| They might've _said_ they killed it off (I haven 't seen
| reports of that), but the Applebot crawler has been
| increasingly indexing the web for at least 8 years,
| ostensibly for services like Siri and Spotlight:
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204683
|
| Also, we know Apple hates to be beholden to other
| companies, triply so for core platform capabilities. Search
| is surely that, especially as its importance extends beyond
| the web into meatspace -- streets, stores, things, etc.
|
| Apple will introduce web search based on their search
| engine when it's clear that it beats Google in notable
| ways. If that takes another 5 years, I'd guess they're fine
| with that.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It's interesting that they haven't considering their stance on
| privacy and user data. Maybe Facebook can cough up some dough
| to become a default social media app.
|
| Apple slaps down Facebook but allows Google to pay to be the
| default surveillance capitalist search provider?
| kvetching wrote:
| Google does this yet lies about their searches to maintain an
| illusion of competence.
|
| For example, you can type in something like "purpose of life" and
| it will say it has 2 billion results, yet if you try to go to
| result 500, you can't, it will stop at 400, then change the
| number to 400 results only on the last page.
|
| This happens for every query. Google lies about the astronomical
| number of search results, then only shows a few hundred at most.
| alas44 wrote:
| Could the number be valid from indexing standpoint but
| irrelevant search results are deemed unworthy of display to
| user? Unworthy + maybe costly on back-end side e.g. because
| infrequently accessed data is in cold storage?
| colpabar wrote:
| I was thinking this too. Not to claim google is trustworthy,
| but pagination with large search result sets can be tricky
| when you go back really far if the queries to fetch them are
| expensive. The count is probably a different system from the
| actual results, and the count switching may just be how they
| handle the 0.000000001% of people who try going to page 400.
| So the lie may not be how high the number is, but the
| expectation of being able to see _all_ the results.
| pessimizer wrote:
| That would mean that the lie is that they show a completely
| irrelevant number which paints Google as a very extensive
| and comprehensive search engine while hiding the relevant
| number which is always radically smaller.
|
| > the expectation of being able to see all the results.
|
| Which would not exist if Google weren't pushing this
| massive mystery number that we're currently, in this
| thread, only speculating about what it could be referring
| to. This expectation could be easily solved by showing the
| number of results that Google is planning to return to the
| user, and tossing out the number that means nothing to
| anyone.
| kevincox wrote:
| > So the lie may not be how high the number is, but the
| expectation of being able to see all the results.
|
| The slight twist is that you _can_ see all of the results.
| Just not by paging. You can refine your query to see them
| all.
|
| I'm sure the number is just an estimation, but it does have
| some value.
| kevincox wrote:
| That's exactly what it is. Each page is more expensive to
| serve than the last (it is basically joining a bunch of
| indexes for each term and then skipping the first N). At some
| number of pages they drew a line and decided that the value
| of these pages isn't worth the cost (and DoS vulnerability)
| to serve them.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| Nevertheless, it's a dark pattern.
|
| They should make it clear to the user how many results are
| available to them.
| kevincox wrote:
| They are "available". Just the way to get there isn't by
| going through the result pages but by refining your
| search.
| wolpoli wrote:
| It made sense back then when you could tell Google the
| exact words that you are looking for. But now that Google
| drops random words from our query, it's not exactly easy
| to refine the search query.
| groffee wrote:
| > At some number of pages they drew a line and decided that
| the value of these pages isn't worth the cost (and DoS
| vulnerability) to serve them.
|
| They have literally _one_ job.
| kevincox wrote:
| To serve you the 5 millionth search result for "funny"?
| Unless you are going to directly pay for that server cost
| it just doesn't make sense, and it is such a rare use
| case that it doesn't even make sense for them to give you
| that option. They have to cut you off somewhere. When is
| the last time you legitimately wanted the 401th page of
| the search results? It will be more efficent for both you
| and Google if you instead refine your search query than
| paging through the results forever.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Pro tip. Never reply to someone who uses "literally"
| incorrectly.
| iso1631 wrote:
| A definition of literally is literally one that is "not
| literally true", thus using literally in this case is
| literally correct
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| I'm sure they could remove spam results if they wanted to, but
| what's the incentive when alternative engines are mediocre and
| time wasting will mean you're going to use their engine for
| longer.
| treeman79 wrote:
| They are also answering questions. Not going to source . But
| answers are way off. Seen many times where it's pulling from
| fan fiction, Etc
| dannysullivan wrote:
| I work for Google Search. The counts we show for results are
| estimated. They get more refined when you go deeper into the
| results. But yes, there are still likely to be millions of
| results for many things you query -- and most people are not
| going to be able to go through all millions of those. So we
| show usually up to around 40 pages / 400 of these. We have a
| help page about this here:
| https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/9603785
| verisimi wrote:
| The message is that you cannot verify what you are told, you
| just get what you're given. And what part you are given is an
| illusion that there are more results. Just trust Google....
| what could go wrong?
|
| Let's not forget, that Eric Schmidt said that more than 1
| result is a bug.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeIIpLqsOe4
|
| This touches on the scope and hubris of Google and other
| companies that mediate reality for us. They think they have
| 'the truth', they know it and will give it to us, and if we
| refuse their truth, they will attempt to train us until we
| get it, in schools, the workplace, online, etc.
|
| It's also why they will become irrelevant. If there is
| nothing organic about their results because the algo filters
| thoughtcrime ideas out, people will continue to move away.
| Thank god.
|
| I personally use presearch and feel happier that the results
| are more natural. But nothing is perfect.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| How inaccurate does an estimation have to be before it
| becomes a lie?
|
| What happens when a bank teller asks me during a credit
| application how many assets I have and I estimate about 10
| billion bucks, when it later turns out I own the three
| dollars in my wallet and a strip of chewing gum? Am I
| (criminally) liable in that case?
| [deleted]
| tigershark wrote:
| Ah ok, so this is why after a certain amount of clicks of the
| mouse I am at the end of the Internet. I still remember the
| time when Internet was much bigger than 40 clicks.
|
| Hopefully someone will disrupt you soon and give us back the
| real Internet.
| svachalek wrote:
| Although they still massively dominate the market, the
| competition is out there. While it wasn't that long ago
| where nobody else's search results were anywhere near as
| good, my experience lately is the opposite -- it's hard to
| do worse than Google results.
| onion2k wrote:
| If you're saying 2 billion when you know there are 'millions'
| your estimates are off by a factor of 2000. If you can really
| only show 400 results then the estimate is off by a factor of
| several million.
|
| Maybe that's just how Google Search works, but the story
| points on your JIRA tickets must be a sight to see. :)
| tehbeard wrote:
| Not so much ballpark estimates as grains of protons in the
| multiverse then...
| c7b wrote:
| Thanks for posting here. Some questions: can you confirm that
| the estimates are unbiased in the statistical sense? Do you
| have an API for accessing the other ones, the help page for
| my locale doesn't mention anything? If not, how do you
| justify showing a very high number of results that users
| can't access?
| nonasktell wrote:
| it's probably a protection against scraping
|
| and yeah there is probably billions of mentions of any
| single word out there if you count the computer generated
| content
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| It's dishonest to show an estimate that is orders of
| magnitude off, and not even mention this with something like
| a +/- standard deviation. I can't imagine how something that
| has only hundreds of real hits could have an estimate of
| hundreds of thousands. Why not just drop this estimate
| altogether?
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| So when I google "cows" and it says "Page 2 of about
| 1,210,000,000 results" you know full well you aren't going to
| show anywhere near 1,201,000,000 results yet you program it
| to display that? And in fact it only shows "about 231
| results" which is 0.000019234% of 1,210,000,000 results.
|
| That doesn't sound like an estimate to me. To me, that is
| intentional misleading.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's a signal that your search is generic. You can refine
| down more and get some hint of that.
|
| Compare: "Cows" "Cows New York" "Cows Bronx New York" "Cows
| Bronx New York major deegan expressway"
|
| This is a dumb example, but the count drops as the search
| is refined. You can use this to guide a specific search as
| well... in a tech example, if you search for a specific log
| entry while troubleshooting you might get 3 results tbat
| appear random. Remove elements of the search and you'll get
| more results and relevance.
| lossolo wrote:
| > of about 1,210,000,000 results
|
| I always read this as: "When we were crawling all the
| internet this phrase you are looking for was found in
| around 1.2 billion pages"
| themitigating wrote:
| How is it misleading? It's an estimate of the total
| results, it doesn't say it's going to display them
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| "I'll sell you about 1,201,000,000 paper clips."
|
| "OK."
|
| _ships 231 paper clips_
|
| "Hey I only got 231 paper clips, not 1,201,000,000."
|
| "That's right. 1,201,000,000 was an estimate."
|
| "You said about. So you estimated 1,201,000,000 paper
| clips but you actually only had 231?"
|
| "No, I had the full 1,201,000,000. I sold them to you but
| I didn't say I would ship all of them. What kind of idiot
| uses more than a few hundred paper clips anyway? Plus, it
| saves us money on shipping costs."
| Miraste wrote:
| It's not, though - when you reach the last page, the
| listed number of results changes to a few hundred. You
| can't approximate a three digit number, be off by 7
| orders of magnitude, and say it's an "estimate" with any
| credibility.
| dlp211 wrote:
| Ok, what do you think is more realistic for a term like
| 'cows', that there are only a few hundred references or
| that there are millions.
|
| I'm not going to say that the UX is designed well end-to-
| end, but Google doesn't display more than X number of
| results for a given search string, ever, where X is
| O(100). It costs way too much money and you are unlikely
| to find what you are looking for by showing you more than
| the top X results.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Do you mind clarifying why they're off by a bajillion
| percent? Ie. If this isn't maliciousness or incompetence,
| what is it?
| dataflow wrote:
| I have no idea what's going on in the algorithm but it's
| not hard to imagine extrapolation of this sort:
| https://xkcd.com/605/
| riversflow wrote:
| This is absolutely trash and essentially false advertising.
| Saying there are 1M+ results but then only having 400
| viewable is straight up misrepresenting your product.
|
| > That's hundreds of results and usually enough for deep
| research needs. You can enter a related query to refine your
| search and learn more.
|
| is both patronizing and offensive. 400 result is 4 pages of
| 100 hits, the way literally anyone who does research on
| google is going to use it(I haven't used a 10 hit Google page
| in well over a decade). Not only that, I can browse through 4
| pages in like 5 minutes, really really inadequate for "deep
| research needs", and really anything beyond cursory
| convenience linking. I've completely dismissed Google Search
| for in depth topics as a result because of the multiple
| occasions I tried in vain to find a page I'd visited
| previously with Google (that I ended up finding again with
| browser history) that just couldn't be found, even going back
| and trying to make a search that works.
|
| > and most people are not going to be able to go through all
| millions of those.
|
| this is totally fair but 400 is just way way too few, if you
| bumped it up to 4k that would be a step in the right
| direction. Additionally, by my thinking, Google is missing
| out on the people who are willing to wade through thousands
| of search results to find quality content, as it stands now
| those pages have very little way to break into the top 400,
| but a complex search term followed by a user wading deep into
| the results to find a specific page where they go and don't
| return would seem to show any extremely strong signal that
| that specific page should probably be ranked somewhat higher.
| IshKebab wrote:
| This is a very bizarre comment. They aren't saying there
| are 1M+ results _that you can access_. Who would even want
| to do that? The number is to give you an idea of how narrow
| your search was.
|
| This reminds me of when I and a couple of other people
| watched someone look through 10 whole pages of Google
| results. Totally insane. But it got even crazier - he
| actually found the thing he was looking for on the 10th
| page! Doubly unbelievable.
| btheshoe wrote:
| ... who cares? Functionally, I have never gone beyond the 3rd
| search page when looking for a useful website. I can see how
| the search engine does find the astronomical number of search
| results, but then just decides for technical reasons to not
| display them. This seems perfectly reasonable to me.
| summerlight wrote:
| This is mostly a technical limitation and has been placed since
| 1998. 99.99% of search queries won't go beyond result 100 then
| what's the point of showing the result 10000000 other than
| technological demonstration?
| salawat wrote:
| It's called "showing an accurate representation of reality"
|
| Ya know, that whole thing indexes are for by definition.
|
| Oh, but if they did that they wouldn't have a convenient way
| to implement dropping something from public view either, so
| there's that.
| _jal wrote:
| If I ran a store with a 10 digit inventory of tools and
| advertised that, but refused to offer more than a tiny
| fraction of them because it was too hard to offer more, what
| do you call that?
| summerlight wrote:
| Well... "running an offline store 101"? In stores based on
| modern supply chain you usually don't always have
| gazillions of shelves to display every single items you
| have so there are multiple tiers of storage from super
| sized warehouses to small local storage.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| If you ran a store, you probably would not have a billion
| items in your inventory, and if you did, not all of them
| would really be available at any one time. And most likely
| your web page wouldn't be able to show them all, either.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| The replies on this thread illustrate why "bike shedding"
| is an evergreen [1].
|
| Maybe they leave that in the results so people will focus
| on trivia, instead of antitrust and other issues that
| actually matter. "Look! Over there! They're claiming
| there are 9 billion answers and _you can 't see them
| all_."
|
| Clever.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality
| butterNaN wrote:
| See: Metaphors
| [deleted]
| arccy wrote:
| if you have a 10 digit number of screwdrivers and somebody
| asked for "screwdrivers", do you bring the entire warehouse
| to them or do you ask them to be more specific in what they
| want?
| saalweachter wrote:
| Eh, it's useful for a power user to know which way to refine.
|
| Searching for [product 1234] has "about" 157 million results
| -> narrow the search -> [product 1234 bookshelf] has about
| 3.4 million results.
|
| Searching for [product 1234defg] has "about" 280 results ->
| widen the search -> [product 1234 defg] has about 54000
| results.
|
| If you just show a number that's around 400 for essentially
| every query, you don't have any feedback on whether to widen
| or narrow the search if you don't see the result in the first
| couple of pages.
| inetknght wrote:
| Technical limitation or not, it is still a lie.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| It's not a lie. "There are eleventy badillion results" is a
| true statement, not a promise to show you all of them.
| amelius wrote:
| You could test that hypothesis by publishing some long
| hash on several hundred pages, then search for it.
| 0x000xca0xfe wrote:
| I believe you can no longer google hash values? It used
| to work years ago but I just searched for
| "6867d9167683fb8f42558a81ad107f5b" and got zero results.
| That is the MD5 hash for "asd3" and this is short enough
| that it should be on one of those MD5 web pages...
|
| Update: Wow, zero results for
| "2585ecdb9a753ca54a96fae62bfda433", the MD5 hash of
| "r68". They must be filtering them out on purpose.
|
| Update 2: Googling "2585ecdb9a753ca54a96fae62bfda433" now
| turns up this exact 10 minute old comment, so your
| approach might work if the hash is embedded within "real"
| content.
| xdavidliu wrote:
| By that same logic, businesses can advertise "sale, many
| items 90% off" but when you show up, nothing is 90% off,
| and you could argue that the business only claimed that
| the items existed, they never said they would actually
| sell it to you.
| amelius wrote:
| I'd be surprised if this didn't actually happen.
| pessimizer wrote:
| There are laws (at least in the US) about advertising
| sales that prevent it from happening.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Except that the word "sale" literally means that you can
| buy something.
| jjcon wrote:
| Similarly I think most would expect result to imply
| retrievability.
| [deleted]
| tshaddox wrote:
| How so? It makes perfect sense to say "there are 1
| million results but you can only access 1,000 of them"
| but it's complete nonsense to say "we are selling 1
| million items but we are only selling 1,000 of them."
| inetknght wrote:
| > _It makes perfect sense to say "there are 1 million
| results but you can only access 1,000 of them"_
|
| Except that's _not_ what Google is saying. Google is
| saying there are 1 million results and won't tell you
| that you can only access the first N.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Where do you see Google's implied or explicit promise to
| provide with you every result they've found?
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Where do you see Google 's implied promise to provide
| with you every result_
|
| The implied promise is the button that says "Search".
|
| 1. It's a search engine. Searching is useless if it
| doesn't provide results.
|
| 2. Searching with other tools works. Use `grep` or your
| computer's local search feature and it will give you all
| of the results.
|
| 3. If I go through my old email, I can download literally
| every email. I can _search_ literally every email, for
| hundreds of thousands of email.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Searching is useless if it doesn't provide results.
|
| True. But that's not the question, is it? The question is
| whether only giving you the "first" N of the results
| makes it useless, or something else...
|
| Nobody, I think, is contesting, that search in some
| contexts is always expected to provide you with access to
| everything that is found. The issue is whether that can
| be expected to apply to a case where 10M results are
| found, and if not, what the cutoff point ought to be ...
| inetknght wrote:
| > > > _Where do you see Google 's implied promise to
| provide with you every result_
|
| > > _The implied promise is the button that says
| "Search"._
|
| > True. But that's not the question, is it?
|
| You wanna stop moving the goalposts?
| leokennis wrote:
| Imagine you search Amazon for "blue baseball cap", they
| say they found 1,234 items and then you could only see
| and purchase 10... Why say you have 10,000,000 search
| results if you only intend to show 100? What's the use of
| the number 10,000,000? To inspire a sense of awe in the
| user, that you then cannot make good on? To inform the
| user on some technicality? To me this feels like Google
| is selling a car that can technically drive 250 km/h but
| is limited at 150 km/h, and then advertising it as "Do
| you love driving 250 km/h? Then buy the Google car!"
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Actually, if the number _actually meant something_ I
| would find it very useful.
|
| If google said there were actually just 1234 results for
| my search, my attitude towards checking things much
| further down the list would be quite different than if it
| said there are 123,456,789 results. With a number like
| that, I know that "deep searching" is likely to be
| fruitless, which is paradoxical but so is life.
|
| The problem is that I'm not convinced that the result
| count actually means what we generally think it does.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You can certainly buy things at this store, and there are
| certainly things for sale at 90% off. The things that are
| 90% off are at other stores, though, and this store can't
| be blamed for your assumptions.
| wolpoli wrote:
| We wouldn't tolerate a business advertising "up to 90%
| off" if there doesn't exist at least one item that is 90%
| off. Businesses can't point to an item that is 30% off
| and claim that 30% off is a subset of 90% off.
| [deleted]
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| When I search for "How do elephants know what time it
| is", and Google tells me there are "Ungefahr 429.000.000
| Ergebnisse" ( _about 429 million results_ ), what is
| Google actually telling me?
|
| There are 429,000,000 pages that are related to my
| search? There are 4.29x10^8 pages that have, what, one or
| more of those words on them?
|
| Seems more like a lie than like the truth.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| In the 53 mins since you checked, google has apparently
| found another 4.3M results for this query :)
| nmeagent wrote:
| How is this not a modern flavor of bait and switch?
| [deleted]
| AlbertCory wrote:
| The word "lie" is kinda hysterical, don't you think?
|
| I joined Google in Nov. 2005, and "The Life of a Query" was one
| of the classes that everyone took. Even then, we were told that
| figures like "110,000 results" were an estimate, and if you
| kept hitting Next, you'd only get about 1,000. Maybe now it's
| 400, I don't know.
|
| What do you expect -- the engine collects all 2 billion and
| puts them in a queue somewhere, just so that the one person in
| 500,000 who actually tries to see them all can?
| k3ylebe3nzle wrote:
| kunwon1 wrote:
| Isn't this how all search engines have worked for most of the
| history of internet search?
|
| I was an avid user of altavista, hotbot, yahoo, and early
| google. I recall that I was always able to 'page' through an
| absurd number of results. But I am old and have a bad memory,
| maybe I'm wrong
| tboyd47 wrote:
| I think in 2022 we can expect the most profitable Internet
| company to return a count of search results more accurate
| than 4 orders of magnitude off.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| They are saying there are that many results but Google
| isn't going to serve some random dude all of them.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Then why are they giving people useless information that
| they didn't ask for?
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| As other have suggested to show your search was too broad
| and you should refine it. (and probably to brag too)
| lrem wrote:
| Do you seriously think that the whole Internet contains
| exactly 400 pages mentioning "the purpose of life",
| including synonyms? ;)
| onion2k wrote:
| Google does.
| c7b wrote:
| > figures like "110,000 results" were an estimate, and if you
| kept hitting Next, you'd only get about 1,000.
|
| Sounds like they're using biased estimators for the number of
| search results. If the estimates weren't biased, the
| underestimated numbers would balance out the overestimated
| ones, so for every query where they fall short by 2 billion
| there would be one that has two billion more hits than shown
| by the UI (or two billion with one hit more).
|
| > The word "lie" is kinda hysterical, don't you think?
|
| _If_ it 's true that they show biased estimates, I'd say
| that's a pretty adequate description.
| wowokay wrote:
| No, I think most of us though google was a more innovative
| company that could create a way to share that many results,
| feels more like an EA move where google stopped trying years
| ago and just went into search maintance mode.
| appletrotter wrote:
| > What do you expect -- the engine collects all 2 billion and
| puts them in a queue somewhere, just so that the one person
| in 500,000 who actually tries to see them all can?
|
| If it's inaccurate and misleading, it's a bug.
|
| If they've noticed it and kept it, that bug has become a
| feature.
| leokennis wrote:
| If Google determines that 99.999% of the people will never go
| beyond result 400, and 99.998% of the people find the result
| they were looking for in these 400 results, then what's the
| use of showing those users there are "about 200,000,000
| results"?
| overboard2 wrote:
| > What do you expect -- the engine collects all 2 billion and
| puts them in a queue somewhere, just so that the one person
| in 500,000 who actually tries to see them all can?
|
| No, I'd expect that it would be able to generate subsequent
| pages on the fly.
| bawolff wrote:
| Why would you expect that.
|
| Idk what technoligies google uses, but generally its kind
| of hard to skip directly to the i'th result of a full text
| index efficiently.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| People expect it because it's the expectation they are
| told to have. When you see "1 of 200,000,000 results" you
| think you can scroll through all of them.
|
| If Google would say "1 of over 1000 results" and cut off
| at page 10 of 100 results with a nice message saying
| "please refine your search query if you haven't found
| what you're looking for," nobody here would be
| complaining.
| dlp211 wrote:
| Google has done this since the beginning of Google and it
| is the first time that I have ever seen this is come up.
|
| This is something that just doesn't matter.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Google limits number of search results to between 300 and
| 400[0] and yea as you know the reason is it is technically
| challenging, expensive and most probably unnecessary to show
| all results but devil is in the details or in this case
| information gem/s are on the 98th page or something like that
| :)
|
| [0] https://the-digital-reader.com/2019/03/27/did-you-know-
| googl...
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > What do you expect -- the engine collects all 2 billion and
| puts them in a queue somewhere, just so that the one person
| in 500,000 who actually tries to see them all can?
|
| Yes.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Perhaps after wading through a billion search results, you
| would actually find the meaning of life, but dismiss it to
| make a pedantic point.
| cycomanic wrote:
| So you're saying it's incompetence not malice? Not sure if
| that makes it better.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| I expect that the estimate is more accurate than "we said
| 11000 but the actual result was 1000". Of course I understand
| it isn't going to be perfect, but that's two orders of
| magnitude off.
| k3ylebe3nzle wrote:
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > the actual result was 1000.
|
| Wrong. I tried "the meaning of life" on Google just now. It
| said:
|
| _About 9,890,000,000 results (0.66 seconds)_
|
| Where is the claim that you will be able to scroll through
| 9,890,000,000 results?
|
| There is _plenty_ to complain about with Google, and the
| rest of this thread shows you some of it. It will be a lot
| more productive for you to focus on some of that.
| Sayrus wrote:
| That's not the issue OP has. The issue is that the claim
| changes when you reach the last page.
|
| For "purpose of life" it changes from "Page 22 of about
| 12,270,000,000 results" to "Page 23 of about 226
| results".
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're trying to say, how else would I
| interpret "9,890,000,000 results" than "there are 9.89
| billion results for that query (that you could
| theoretically scroll through)"?
| sulam wrote:
| I would interpret it as an invitation to refine my search
| query, because that's too many results for me to usefully
| filter.
| onion2k wrote:
| But really, as far as any non-Googler is concerned,
| there's 400 actual results and a random number generator
| that generated "9,890,000,000" for that search.
|
| It's not a million miles from hotel and flights websites
| saying "37 people are looking at this page right now!"
| It's a dark pattern to increase engagement. A pretty
| innocuous one in Google's case, but it is a little
| deceptive.
| nmeagent wrote:
| An invitation to _try_ to refine your search query, while
| Google simultaneously does its best to ignore a
| significant fraction of the terms in your refined query
| because it thinks it knows better than you.
| jasonfarnon wrote:
| I would interpret "refine your search query" as an
| invitation to refine my search query. Not, there are ___
| results and here is the first 10 of them and an arrow at
| the bottom of the page to go to the next 10. That is a
| pretty bad way of conveying "refine your search query". A
| pretty bad way that happens to be flattering to the
| company.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Yes, but a reasonable person would likely think that
| there is that many results to wade through if they so
| chose.
| 3r3r3r1111111 wrote:
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Very interesting. Just tried it with "covid-19" and its true.
| About 13,460,000,000 results (1.35 seconds) ..
| Page 2 of about 163 results (1.15 seconds)
| >"If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted
| results included."< .. About
| 12,620,000,000 results (1.26 seconds) ..
| Page 4 of about 361 results (1.75 seconds)
| texasbigdata wrote:
| It's like the sticker that says "this amp goes to 11". Google
| just went further!
|
| Somewhere a product manager is beaming with pride
| therein wrote:
| Yeah, indeed. And not only on controversial topics either.
|
| Check these videos out.
|
| TruthStream's production:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zyJB45ewvU
|
| Jimmy from BrightInsight:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWbytHBp0zI
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O_NvPpbsbw
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| You got a lot of responses telling you why Google can't or
| doesn't want to provide an accurate result count. I guess the
| logic is:
|
| 1. Google has to return a result count.
|
| 2. It can't/won't be accurate.
|
| 3. Therefore it's fine to provide a count 10 billion times to
| large.
|
| The jump from 2 to 3 is dodgy and I see people questioning it.
| But I don't see anybody challenging point 1. Why does google
| have to give a number at all? If google can't/won't give an
| accurate result count, then they should give a result count at
| all. I don't care what technical limitations might complicate
| giving an accurate result count, that's no excuse for lying
| when silence is a perfectly valid choice.
|
| Obviously they provide the count for marketing reasons. That's
| an explanation for the lying, but not an excuse.
| moralestapia wrote:
| > 2. It can't/won't be accurate.
|
| >3. Therefore it's fine to provide a count 10 billion times
| to (sic) large.
|
| LOL, what? No way!
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| When I say the leap from 2 to 3 is dodgy, I meant that as a
| bit of dry understatement. It's insane. But to even get to
| point 2 you need to first assume point 1, which is that
| Google is somehow compelled to provide a result count. They
| aren't. They could simply remove the result count and not
| say anything about it, then they wouldn't ""need"" to lie
| about it.
| wolpoli wrote:
| The number of pages in a search index and the number of
| results found were major selling points for search engines.
| I'd say that the count got carried forward in the last 20
| years.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| As I said, it's for marketing. That's the explanation, but
| it's not an excuse. They should remove it, nobody is
| forcing them to keep it. They choose to keep it even though
| they know it's insanely inaccurate.
| wolpoli wrote:
| Yeah I agree it is an explanation. My 'nobody wanted to
| touch it in the last 2 decades' hypothesis isn't
| justification for keeping around either.
|
| Interestingly, I just did a search for "Google" and when
| I got to the page 36, the top changed to "Page 36 of 360
| results" from "Page 35 of about 25,270,000,000 results".
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _My 'nobody wanted to touch it in the last 2 decades'
| hypothesis_
|
| They must be porting it forward to new versions of their
| results page, right? The results page has changed a lot
| over the years. It might be a dusty forgotten decision to
| have it, but it can't be dusty forgotten code.
| wolpoli wrote:
| Yup. My 'nobody wanted to touch it in the last 2 decades'
| hypotheses was more referring to how the feature might
| have made sense in the earlier days when Google respects
| all the keywords in our search queries. As Google
| evolved, it became impossible to drill into those
| results, but there's no upside for any product manager to
| change/remove it.
| themitigating wrote:
| If it's an estimate it's not a lie
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| It's not a good faith estimate. They know their queries
| never return a million results, let alone hundreds of
| billions. Asserting that it's an estimate is insulting.
| mortehu wrote:
| This comment could have been written in 1998. I think by now
| most people know how the result estimates work (i.e. not at
| all).
| colpabar wrote:
| "most people" take the top results of a google search as
| gospel.
| rudasn wrote:
| Not surprising though, as others have mentioned.
|
| GitHub does this too, if you click on the Issues page and
| change the search query it searches all of github, not just
| your own repos. But you can't go to the last page of the
| results (not sure about the max page number, but there is a
| limit and for good reasons).
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| <query> | head -n 500
| nostrademons wrote:
| Note that if you search [purpose of life], it _does not_ say it
| has 2 billion results anywhere on the first page. My team
| removed the blue bar containing that text way back in 2010. You
| have to hit "Next" or otherwise visit page 2 to get it.
|
| And I'd bet the reason why it's still there (I left Search in
| 2014) is because < 0.1% of users ever hit the next page.
| Everybody else just refines their query to a different search.
| It's a holdover from when search engines were bad (i.e. around
| 1998) and you had to go through 10 pages of results to get the
| one you were looking for. As a result, Google expends
| approximately zero engineering effort on pages 2-20 of the
| results - I know that in the 4 visual redesigns I worked on, we
| didn't touch them once. It wouldn't surprise me if the response
| to flack on this is to just get rid of all pages other than the
| first one - it avoids the issue entirely and wouldn't affect
| 99.9% of users.
|
| The technical reason for this behavior, as others have remarked
| below, is pagination. Ranking across the full result set is a
| very complex calculation, and it can depend on some factors
| that are basically random (eg. timeouts and failures in backend
| servers). It'd make pagination basically useless if the same
| results you already went through show up on a later page
| because the ranking is different. This requires that the full
| result set be cached. You can cache 400-1000 results for each
| of the queries that the 0.1% of users who actually hit "Next"
| care about, but you'd have a big issue caching 2 billion
| results for each of those queries.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Oh boy do I feel special right now, since I hit 2nd page (or
| even 3rd etc) quite often since main search became quite a
| spam-infested over-seod crapfest few years ago for some types
| of search. Some first results are outright dodgy, often
| outranking ie official sites and I strongly suspect only
| malware awaits there.
|
| Such a shame for basically one-trick pony who doesnt
| understand that staying relevant long term means that trick
| must be and remain a damn good proposition.
|
| Its true I eventually give up and do ie duckduckgo and if
| that fails I try to refine searches even more (but this
| rarely works since I already start with it as default)
| echelon wrote:
| What does the search org look like internally? Is it
| connected with the ads or Chrome orgs at any interface? Do
| the rank and file ICs, EMs, and PMs have issues with how
| these products interact?
|
| I have so many complaints about your product, it drives me
| wild.
|
| How many people even look at organic results versus the paid-
| for ads that display at top?
|
| It should be _illegal_ for anyone to be able to purchase ads
| for another company 's trademark. Apple, Google, and Amazon
| are all extorting companies by forcing them to buy ads to
| protect their own brand. (My own brand is being attacked by a
| competitor in this way, and it's ridiculous!)
|
| The only reason anyone uses these systems at scale is that
| third parties were available in aggregate early on to provide
| content. You built your product off of our backs. And now
| that the power dynamic has shifted, we're cattle to soak for
| as much revenue as possible.
|
| It also seems like the only reason Google is dominant is bad
| behavior. Paying for default search engine status. Being the
| default in all of their other unrelated platforms. Achieving
| browser monopoly.
|
| I've recently started seeing Chrome ads and billboards
| everywhere. Google purchased a huge percentage of my city's
| billboard ad inventory for their "better on Chrome" campaign.
| It's as if Google knows this is the reason for everything.
| Where except for Apple devices is Chrome not dominant?
|
| This whole cartel needs a muzzle.
|
| Device companies should not be ad companies.
|
| Ad companies should not be service companies.
|
| Service companies should not be content and production
| companies, since they can favor their own and price pressure
| the rest.
|
| We have a world where the top tech conglomerates are all of
| these and then some. They've cast a wide net and turned the
| whole world of consumer interaction into a supermarket, where
| we now have to pay for "shelf space" to interact with
| customers, pay to protect our brands from unfair sniping, pay
| to grow, obey asinine rules to build a product that fits
| their desired shape, integrate with their payments and login
| stack (so we're even less in a relationship with our
| customers).
|
| It's a far cry from the open web of the 90's. Really bad for
| small companies, new startups, and even consumers. We can
| barely afford to build our products with all the margin that
| goes to Google, Apple, and the rest.
|
| I wish the rank and file could feel this. :(
| nostrademons wrote:
| I have no idea, I left Search 8 years ago. I would bet on
| people responding to incentives, though, because that seems
| like a universal constant of human behavior.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > It's a holdover from when search engines were bad (i.e.
| around 1998) and you had to go through 10 pages of results to
| get the one you were looking for.
|
| Unlike today, right? Where actual search results... represent
| less than 10% of the page and the rest is irrelevant
| information and ads in Google search
| https://grumpy.website/post/0XCmMC-2O
| nomel wrote:
| > Note that if you search [purpose of life], it does not say
| it has 2 billion results anywhere on the first page.
|
| This is false for other search terms. Search for "meaning of
| life". At the top left of the first result page it says
| "About 10,620,000,000 results (0.56 seconds)".
|
| Screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/SQq7Snl
|
| Logged into Google, Safari 15.6.1.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Must've been brought back after I left, I have no idea what
| the rationale was.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| Does that mean you don't use google search? Its been back
| a long time.
|
| What do you prefer for search if not?
| bergenty wrote:
| Well how do you know there aren't 10 billion results
| [deleted]
| nomel wrote:
| Here's a good one:
|
| "starfish buttercup pickle mouse"
|
| Page 1 of _2_ says
|
| > About 589,000 results (0.62 seconds)
|
| Page 2 of 2 says
|
| > Page 2 of about 22 results (0.36 seconds)
|
| Oops! Must have been one of those common "multiply by
| 26,772" errors.
|
| At the bottom of the page, it says "In order to show you
| the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries
| very similar to the 22 already displayed." with an option
| to show all results.
|
| With all results shown, the total result count goes to
| 59, or over 2x more honest. Impressive!
| blastro wrote:
| wow, never noticed that before.
| guestbest wrote:
| This is fraudulent marketing, but I've seen bing do this as
| well
| jolmg wrote:
| Bing is worse in that it makes it seem like you can go to
| e.g. page 100 and will say stuff like "1,000-1,006 of
| 659,000,000 results", but it's really showing you the results
| from page 5. Then, for example, in page 5, 6, 7, etc. you can
| see the same results between them, just shuffled around. You
| can't even tell how many results you're really getting.
| badwolf wrote:
| Gawd, the same results shuffled to different positions on
| every different page of results, and how they make ads and
| sponsored "results" almost impossible to distinguish...
| It's truly terrible.
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| Just tested this, it stops at page 22 with no more next... wow.
| foobarian wrote:
| Most of the replies under this comment are invalid because of
| the words "About" in front of those statements. I love the word
| "about" - it's even more slippery than "many," which implies
| non-zero.
| manimino wrote:
| One thing I find amazing is that "single box" search engines are
| still the standard.
|
| The biggest pain point of using Google is when it incorrectly
| guesses what you are trying to search. But the user is only
| allowed to type in one little box, so it's hard for the user to
| even express what they want.
|
| If the user had multiple inputs, such as the ability to drill
| down, define general topics, etc., it would be way easier for
| them to express what they actually want.
|
| A Google competitor that did this well could win.
| summerlight wrote:
| 99% of searches are good enough with just a single text phrase.
| 1% needs more refinement. The current approach is
| personalization but I think having more dialogue like UX which
| can better capture the contextual information might be more
| suitable. But the blocker here is that our so-called AI
| technology is not there yet and those 1% searches are usually
| not very valuable in terms of revenue.
| paulcole wrote:
| What percentage of searches require something this complex?
| I've been using Google for 20 years now and I'd be hard-pressed
| to remember a single time when I pined for a more complex
| interface.
|
| The vast majority of my searches are simple, so I just do my
| first search and then (in order of frequency) find what I was
| looking for, do a second search that is either more or less
| complex than the first, or forget why I was searching in the
| first place.
|
| Since the results from my first search are often enough, why
| would I want the interface to do that search to be _more_
| complex when the complexity is rarely needed?
| blihp wrote:
| When the subject is a generic or overloaded name, it's very
| common. For example, I've often done searches related to
| Smalltalk or Lisp (the programming languages) combined with
| names of various popular but generic libraries and get lots
| of results for small talk[1] and lisps[2]. There are various
| techniques you can use to cajole Google into giving you
| something closer to what you want but you end up losing a lot
| of the results that are the most useful due to terms you need
| to add to your search that aren't on most pages.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_talk [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp
| 1123581321 wrote:
| People don't enjoy more complex search inputs. This can be
| readily seen at libraries where users strongly desire Google-
| style catalog search and don't like being shown separate fields
| for author, title, keyword, etc. Worldcat hid that traditional
| search view years ago and, like Google, keeps it around for
| those who prefer it.
|
| Increasing max query length seems more promising since it keeps
| the simple interface. Search expectations are changing as we
| Google more verbose errors and eventually expect to shape our
| search queries as we do our GPT prompts with extra moods,
| language styles, countries of origin, etc.
| eganist wrote:
| > Worldcat hid that traditional search view years ago and,
| like Google, keeps it around for those who prefer it.
|
| In fact, it's _so true_ that in order to find Advanced Search
| on Google and it doesn 't occur to you to go into the
| settings menu in the top right (the gear - because why would
| anyone bury Advanced Search there anyway?), you have to
| actually google Advanced Search.
|
| For Google to have buried it like this, Advanced Search
| must've been confusing the vast majority of people who tried
| to use it.
| dmurray wrote:
| > For Google to have buried it like this, Advanced Search
| must've been confusing the vast majority of people who
| tried to use it.
|
| Or, pushing people towards the simplified "let us figure
| out what you want" showed slightly better ad conversion
| rates.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _For Google to have buried it like this, Advanced Search
| must 've been confusing the vast majority of people who
| tried to use it._
|
| Apple, the industry leading expert of UX, didn't have
| copy/paste in iOS for years. Compelling evidence that
| copy/paste is too complicated for people, right? Then one
| day they added copy/paste, I guess the nature of people
| changed over night and Apple merely responded to this new
| tolerance for complexity. They're the experts, after all.
|
| Or maybe, [tech company] not implementing [feature] isn't
| good evidence for that feature being undesirable to the
| public.
| eganist wrote:
| > Apple, the industry leading expert of UX, didn't have
| copy/paste in iOS for years. Compelling evidence that
| copy/paste is too complicated for people, right? Then one
| day they added copy/paste, I guess the nature of people
| changed over night and Apple merely responded to this new
| tolerance for complexity. They're the experts, after all.
|
| > Or maybe, [tech company] not implementing [feature]
| isn't good evidence for that feature being undesirable to
| the public.
|
| Not sure Google burying advanced search is a good analogy
| here since Google once used to make advanced search
| easily accessible from the main page.
|
| In fact, they still do depending on your user agent. Case
| in point: Wayback Machine's view from today. https://web.
| archive.org/web/20220909000247/https://www.googl...
|
| The fact that its appearance is variable would seem to
| suggest it's a _very deliberate decision_ to determine
| whether to surface it, unlike Apple just trying to force
| its own worldview.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| My point is that these companies are _not_ ruthlessly
| scientific user experience optimization machines. Google
| burying advanced search should not be taken as evidence
| that users didn 't like advanced search.
| panick21_ wrote:
| How about instead of doing really dumb complex forms we put
| our thinking heads on and try to optimize the process.
|
| If you type 'Tolkin' the UI could suggest 'Author' and if you
| click on it adds it as a constraint. There are all kinds of
| things you could do by having a simple switch to complex
| search and have interesting options with a good UI.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Isn't this the classic HN misconception, that complex,
| customisable interfaces ought to be popular?
| planetsprite wrote:
| Yes, this site skews heavily not just in favor of engineers,
| but the more old-school, "give me the box of tools and leave
| me alone" style engineer. 99% of humans who use a computer
| just want a single button that implicitly means "give me
| content" and they're satisfied.
| mountainb wrote:
| They are though. The most profitable paid search engines have
| incredibly sophisticated operators and interfaces. Westlaw
| has a super sophisticated topic sorting system that goes back
| about a century. Lexis has something similar it generates by
| software.
|
| Free search isn't the only way. When your users all charge
| hundreds or thousands of dollars an hour and really need good
| information, they will pay a lot.
|
| What's ultimately limited is general user free search. Normal
| person time just isn't very valuable and they mostly just
| want stimulation. Google is mostly a stimulation engine
| pretending to be a knowledge engine. It started off as more
| of a knowledge engine and over time optimized itself for
| providing a buzz.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Yes. Classic approach here is that exposing more behavior is
| better and that there should be rich formal languages for
| interacting with systems. Good for HN, more questionable for
| the rest of users.
| Terretta wrote:
| pay for kagi.com; it has "lenses" that define a corpus for your
| search
| manimino wrote:
| I'm trying it out for free and so far it's turning up great
| results. Thanks for the recommendation.
| odysseus wrote:
| There's also Brave Search which has "Goggles" that perform
| the same function. https://search.brave.com/goggles
| eganist wrote:
| https://www.google.com/advanced_search
|
| This?
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Yes, and very few people use that because most users can't
| tell an app from a website, spell URL correctly or tell you
| what "" does in google.
|
| When I need those features I use the operators directly in
| the search field anyway.
|
| The single omniscient search field is an amazing interface,
| it's incredible at what it does, which is understanding what
| our idiodic human brain is attempting to express with sausage
| fingers a monday morning.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > spell URL correctly
|
| That's impossiboe by design. There are different cuaracters
| that look identical, foreign alphabets and special
| characters. Then there are GUids and queries in url
| manimino wrote:
| Oof. That's really complicated and still doesn't do the
| trick.
|
| Concrete example -- when searching Reddit, I can check a box
| to confine the search to the current subreddit I'm on. That
| does a wonderful job of restricting results, and... it's one
| checkbox.
|
| You don't need to make search feel like filing your taxes to
| make it better.
| eganist wrote:
| > Oof. That's really complicated and still doesn't do the
| trick.
|
| > Concrete example -- when searching Reddit, I can check a
| box to confine the search to the current subreddit I'm on.
| That does a wonderful job of restricting results, and...
| it's one checkbox.
|
| > You don't need to make search feel like filing your taxes
| to make it better.
|
| I'm surprised at the Reddit example since Reddit's search
| capabilities are in-fact _so awful_ that people have
| actually quit the platform for it or have at the very least
| resorted to using Google to search for specific Reddit
| threads (doable via Google 's advanced search or simply
| adding the keyword "site:reddit.com").
|
| In fact, the capability you described is present on the
| Advanced Search form. Look for the row "site or domain" and
| you can constrain your search to just specific sites.
|
| I think the thing people miss is that Google effectively
| creates the function you're describing not just by having a
| multi-field search box (advanced search) but by allowing
| that to be achieved through just one text box (e.g "site:",
| "inurl:", "filetype:", and other key words), and for more
| tailored searches, Google provides entirely distinct UIs
| such as News, Shopping, Scholar (my favorite), etc.
|
| I suppose I'm just lost as to what the main complaint is. I
| can't bring myself to work at Google because of how heavily
| they rely on adtech for revenue, but I can't hate their
| search.
| elliekelly wrote:
| That just creates the search with boolean operators for
| you... which Google then ignores. Attempts to search for an
| "exact string" are merely a suggestion to Google. They'd
| rather return 10 pages of _definitely not what I wanted_
| (i.e., wrong!) results than only return one or two hits even
| if those one or two hits are exactly what I'm searching for!
| eganist wrote:
| Nah, you can still force it. It treats exact-strings as
| suggestions at first, but you can still power through.
|
| e.g https://www.google.com/search?q="search+enqine"
|
| click the link that says "Search instead for 'search
| enqine'"
| tremon wrote:
| So Google understood my search query perfectly fine, but
| still chose to ignore what I asked for, and then makes me
| jump through additional hoops to get my initial question
| answered?
| dekhn wrote:
| Yes. Many years ago Google search leaders concluded it
| made more sense to optimize for what most people do: make
| bad queries. Ignoring quotes produces results that people
| click on more than respecting quotes (averaged over
| billions of users). This is also why the number one
| signal for ranking is user clicks, not something like
| page rank.
| eganist wrote:
| > So Google understood my search query perfectly fine,
| but still chose to ignore what I asked for, and then
| makes me jump through additional hoops to get my initial
| question answered?
|
| Google's catering to the common audience, so yes
| basically. The hoops are for people who know what they're
| doing, which is annoying but understandable.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| is there any proof that this has improved search for most
| people? Everyone i kniw says the opposite
| meltyness wrote:
| I default to Bing on desktop, and DDG on mobile. For a specific
| search, I often give-up, and begrudgingly revert.
|
| It's obvious that Google search has become the better product,
| but quality has wavered in the past 5 years, it's been on an
| uptrend. That on occasion the search task reports a 1.4s delay is
| actually reassuring.
|
| Functioning operator search, Scholar, and Books seem to be the
| distinct advantage Google has for many of my use cases.
|
| My biggest issue with all of the big players is the gaslighting
| and erosion. They need to dogfood everything. When my keyboard
| ime is suddenly under attack, and it gets stuck that way for
| months, it's time to look at how you're doing things.
| russianGuy83829 wrote:
| What is your reason for using bing instead of DDG on the
| desktop? DDG uses results from bing, so in theory the quality
| should be the same?
| meltyness wrote:
| Bing's results tend to be a lot more crowded and visually
| distracting, I'd really just rather have search results on my
| tiny phone screen.
| bogwog wrote:
| > The revenue-sharing deals that Google offers to browsers are
| essential to companies like Mozilla Corp., he said, because they
| offer their products to users for free.
|
| > "The reason they partner with Google isn't because they had to;
| it's because they want to," Schmidtlein said.
|
| Mozilla would disappear overnight if Google stopped paying them.
|
| Good riddance IMO (even though I love FF and it's the only
| browser I use). They haven't been able to build a sustainable
| business despite receiving hundreds of millions of dollars per
| year from Google. A flower shop on a street corner can get a
| better ROI. Mozilla's management is incompetent and shady.
| masterof0 wrote:
| I remember a comment from their CEO complaining that a 3
| million USD comp was a "sacrifice" she was making because she
| believes on the mission. Totally insane.
| googlryas wrote:
| Well, if she can be getting paid $10M somewhere else, then it
| is a sacrifice.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| If that's a real opportunity she has, I wish she'd leave
| Mozilla and take it. But given the abysmal performance of
| Mozilla, is she _actually_ worth as much as she claims? Why
| should we believe her?
| foobarian wrote:
| That's what happens when you cheap out on a CEO and pay
| them $3M instead of $10M :-)
| tmpz22 wrote:
| This is a "let them eat cake" style of statement. Yeah the
| poor could sustain themselves on cake, but read the room.
| Especially as Firefox has made lots of layoffs recently.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I can't parse this comment. Who's the princess, what's
| the bread, and what's the cake? And what are they
| supposed to read in the room? As far as I can tell, "read
| the room" is something that people have been saying a lot
| on twitter over the past few months in order to silence
| people when they are correct, therefore difficult to
| argue with.
|
| > Yeah the poor could sustain themselves on cake,
|
| This is the opposite of what the anecdote is meant to
| say, right? The joke is that the poor _can 't_ sustain
| themselves on cake because lacking bread also means
| lacking cake. Is $3 million the bread? Is the CEO the
| poor? Am I having a stroke?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| that is less a problem with mozilla and more a problem with
| CEO class that get massive pay yet often its difficult to
| distinguish who is a real proffeshional and who is full of
| hot air
| badrabbit wrote:
| Why is that insane? A CEO is just a job and how much you get
| paid depends on how much the industry is willing to pay you.
| So turning down 10mil to earn 3mil is indeed a sacrifice.
| Unless you have something against people making a lot of
| money or think once you hit some number you should not say
| anything bad about the pay. People don't get salaries because
| they earned or deserved them, they get them because that's
| what others are willing to pay for their work.
| patcon wrote:
| > So turning down 10mil to earn 3mil is indeed a sacrifice.
|
| Agree whole-heartedly.
|
| I'm all for reducing exec pay and wage disparity, but
| still... let's give ppl props when they do pro-social
| things. That's the moral equivalent of a talented software
| eng opting to take a 70% pay cut to work in non-profit or
| government sector instead of private sector. The majority
| of ppl reading and judging are doing no such thing
| pessimizer wrote:
| Taking money from an organization that intends to do good
| and riding it into the ground is sabotage, not charity.
| At least Marissa Mayer fixed Yahoo up long enough to pull
| off a sale. Firefox alternates between stagnation and
| self-injury.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| When did we decide the only people who could be CEOs had to
| be blessed with magic CEO-dust or whatever, and must be
| showered with cash because there aren't enough people so-
| dusted and they're apparently impossible to train unless
| they've had _just_ the right pedigree from birth? Is there
| really no-one at the company who could do the job and would
| be happy to take a promotion and a "mere" $1M salary? It's
| not fucking brain surgery, normal people can figure it out,
| and they _used to_. It 's just a job.
|
| In Mozilla's case especially, such a gamble ("gamble"--I
| really don't think it's _that_ out-there) seems eminently
| worth it, since they 've been treading water _at best_ for
| over a decade. What 's the worst that can happen? They fail?
| Already happening.
|
| I suspect this entire trend (across the economy, not just at
| Mozilla) is due to some combo of our modern intense aversion
| for taking responsibility for anything whatsoever, and
| pervasive self-dealing in the management class. Board won't
| replace the "right" kind of person with the "wrong" kind
| because it's Simply Not Done--why, if anyone in the top half
| of the intelligence bell curve and an OK work ethic could do
| their jobs with just a little experience and training, they
| might no longer command such insane salaries! Can't have
| that.
|
| But, I'm open to the possibility that it did in fact become
| unworkable, for some reason I don't know about, to just train
| people into these positions as-needed, and in fact we _do_
| have to pay stupid amounts of money to a tiny, incestuous
| c-suite class who are the only possible candidates for these
| roles, or else everything will fall apart.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| You don't have to hand wave a CEO as just magic dust. At
| least on paper the CEO is there for their ability to
| network at _the highest of levels_ whether that is to
| recruit other executives, raise capital, predict global
| strategy, whatever.
|
| Its all still horse shit, but if you want to tear down the
| American CEO institution you have to understand their first
| and primary argument is that they can still do things
| others can't, because they're (reportedly) in those smoke
| filled room where "big deals get done".
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > Its all still horse shit, but if you want to tear down
| the American CEO institution you have to understand their
| first and primary argument is that they can still do
| things others can't, because they're (reportedly) in
| those smoke filled room where "big deals get done".
|
| Sure--and I'm serious that I'm open to the possibility
| that something _actually did change_ about the business
| landscape for non-shitty (i.e. not corruption or
| principal-agent-problem) reasons such that it 's _in
| fact_ true that there 's a big advantage to hiring from
| the small pool of acceptable CEO candidates that
| justifies giving them entire train cars full of cash, but
| it does seem to me like we didn't _used_ to operate that
| way and things were... basically fine. Not that there
| weren 't huge advantages to being in the "right" set, or
| whatever, as there has been in any time and place, but
| that it seems like for the specific case of CEOs it used
| to be more acceptable to train up existing employees, who
| didn't _start_ their employment with the company
| somewhere in the top-exec echelon, into those kinds of
| roles, which behavior seems like it would act as a pretty
| effective relief valve on CEO comp getting out of
| control.
|
| What's going on now _sure looks like_ what would happen
| if the people in charge of hiring for these roles had a
| strong interest in keeping the compensation extremely
| high. But it 's still possible there's something else
| going on, and there _are_ good, non-corrupt motivations
| at work.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| > it does seem to me like we didn't used to operate that
| way
|
| I think that's nostalgia glasses. The level of corruption
| in SV seems no different to me to Wall Street in the 90s.
| People in power grasping community resources as their own
| is nothing new to humankind.
|
| Its still worth being passionate about and rebelling
| against. While the general theme of the corruption may be
| similar its still eventful that it is occurring in new
| areas and in new ways (i.e. SPACs, ICOs).
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I think that's nostalgia glasses. The level of
| corruption in SV seems no different to me to Wall Street
| in the 90s. People in power grasping community resources
| as their own is nothing new to humankind.
|
| The 90s might be the wrong point to measure from. Isn't
| it pretty well documented that CEOs are getting paid
| greater "multiples" of average pay than they had in the
| past (e.g. they used to be paid 100x, now they're paid
| 1000x)?
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Admittedly, the "used to" is rather longer ago than the
| 90s :-) More like through the 70s.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I'm open to the possibility that something actually did
| change about the business landscape ... such that it's in
| fact true that there's a big advantage to hiring from the
| small pool of acceptable CEO candidates that justifies
| giving them entire train cars full of cash...
|
| Even if there was a big advantage to hire from the same
| small pool of acceptable candidates, that's no
| justification for paying them "entire train cars full of
| cash." There's all kinds of scarce and valuable skills
| that are just as rare but compensation doesn't shoot off
| to infinity.
| badrabbit wrote:
| Again with this sentiment, you're not paying the CEO. "We"
| didn't decide that, the people with the 3M decided that
| person's services was worth that amount and it is their
| money to spend or waste as they see fit.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| You get that I'm using that a touch _poetically_ , which
| is a common usage of "we" in this kind of context, right?
| I.e. "what changed such that this is now how society
| operates, even though it seems kinda worse than how it
| operated before?" I (obviously?) don't mean that we all
| got together and decided this, and that only a small set
| of probably-biased-by-their-own-interests people are the
| ones making the decisions is exactly one of the possible
| reasons for it that I highlighted, making it (surely?)
| even clearer what my post was about.
| umeshunni wrote:
| Cool story bro. You should just start your own company
| and get a CEO and pay her $40k.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _" Is there really no-one at the company who could do
| the job and would be happy to take a promotion and a
| "mere" $1M salary?"_
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I want to reserve my response until you clarify who 'we'
| refers to. I just do not want to assume.
| evr1isnxprt wrote:
| Isn't receiving hundreds of millions a year a sustainable
| business?
|
| I did not realize currency trade was constrained to your
| sensibilities; my bad. Private property, free markets! Until
| two parties enter into an arrangement then you demand they open
| themselves to business with others?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Imagine you pissoff Jeff Bezos, sould it be cool if he pays
| your employer to fire you, your landlord to get rid of you,
| hires a private detective to dig up dirt on you and offers
| every future employer money just to ruin your carreer?
|
| Thats what free market allows.
| evr1isnxprt wrote:
| Oh I wasn't advocating for free markets. I think it's a
| ridiculous "phrase of power" spoken tradition gibberish.
|
| I'm highlighting social hypocrisy.
|
| Google isn't sustainable without policy concessions; the
| market value gibberish is added onto something that is
| propped up by government looking the other way to sell the
| idea to people who don't understand finance is an ephemeral
| con game. IMO " _big_ software products and services" are
| only big business because it's also profitable to
| politicians insider trading schemes. Open source and for
| hire software workers and ridding ourselves of big corp
| protectionism provisions in law and policy would be great.
| Very little of this distributed ledger and accounting
| nonsense has value to the average worker; their day to day
| is being a worker. Make the minority of "successes" compete
| on an open labor market instead of giving Bezos a pass.
| Having 25 people willing to chuck $50k each at my dreams.
|
| Make him a gig worker too.
| acoard wrote:
| > Isn't receiving hundreds of millions a year a sustainable
| business?
|
| Right, but the argument goes that the only reason Google pays
| Mozilla so much is to prop up the competition. Google may
| have calculated that it would be preferable to pay the
| hundreds of millions, rather than have Firefox die just
| leaving Chrome/Safari.
|
| Thus, it's not really a sustainable business, but rather
| being the lucky benefactor of some scheme. Their value is
| only in being 'the other guy', not in actually creating a
| valuable product for consumers. I wouldn't call that a
| sustainable business.
| evr1isnxprt wrote:
| The majority of the software industry is just lucky
| benefactors who "got there first".
|
| Google isn't a sustainable business without paying enormous
| sums to remain in business, without a whole lot of
| political concessions that have been made to hype USian
| markets.
|
| What is and isn't a sustainable business is relative to how
| frequently you have been told what is and isn't sustainable
| business.
| signatoremo wrote:
| > The majority of the software industry is just lucky
| benefactors who "got there first".
|
| This is not true. There are so many examples of 2nd mover
| who became the dominant force, such as Zoom, Photoshop,
| MS Office, IntelliJ.
|
| To attribute a success product purely to luck is also
| intellectually lazy. There are often so many factors, in
| many cases conflicting, that change of course of a
| product. It is impossible to say luck is the main factor,
| although it is usually a factor.
| [deleted]
| Beltalowda wrote:
| How are you supposed to build a "sustainable business" if
| you're expected to offer your product for free because your
| competitors are pouring money from _other_ businesses in to
| it to offer it for free?
|
| Google Chrome is not a "sustainable business" either; it
| just gets funded by Google's other business activities
| (mainly Google ads). Arguably, Safari is the only one that
| people (indirectly) pay for when they purchase an Apple
| device.
|
| > Their value is only in being 'the other guy', not in
| actually creating a valuable product for consumers.
|
| I use Firefox purely because I feel it works better than
| Chrome.
| eminence32 wrote:
| > Their value is only in being 'the other guy', not in
| actually creating a valuable product for consumers
|
| Mozilla's value to Google might be only being "the other
| guy", but Mozilla is valuable to me (a consumer) because
| they are producing a Firefox, which is a product I consider
| valuable.
|
| Obviously I would prefer that Mozilla can find a self-
| sustainable business model to support Firefox development.
| But if I had to choose between "Mozilla doesn't exist" and
| "Mozilla exists only because it gets money from Google",
| then I choose the latter.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| But the fact that Mozilla continue to require Google's
| money to survive means that not enough people would make
| the same choice.
| bink wrote:
| Perhaps, but also consider that they are only in this
| position because Google uses their search monopoly to
| fund development of a free alternative... much like
| Microsoft used their desktop OS monopoly to do the same
| in the 90s.
| jorams wrote:
| While I don't think user payments would be enough to fund
| development, I don't think "they need Google's money" is
| evidence for it. It's not like paying for Firefox is
| currently an option.
|
| Firefox is developed by the Mozilla Corporation. The
| closest thing to paying for Firefox is probably donating
| to the Mozilla Foundation, but that money is used for
| education and advocacy.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > It's not like paying for Firefox is currently an
| option.
|
| That's a choice made by the Mozilla Corporation, not a
| technical impossibility.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| > despite receiving hundreds of millions of dollars per year
| from Google
|
| > despite
|
| "In spite of paying my 30 year old live-at-home son a $100,000
| per year allowance, he has been unable to find and hold a full-
| time job"
| moralestapia wrote:
| >Mozilla's management is incompetent and shady.
|
| Yes, and plenty of guys have been saying that since day 0 of
| the new management taking over, only to get ignored and hushed
| away. Yet, here we are 8(!) years later :).
|
| New unpopular opinion: Mozilla needs to disappear. The faster
| it does the better, as it is already dead.
| patcon wrote:
| Yeah, the Red Cross can screw right off. And libraries. Things
| should not exist in this world if they can't pay their own
| way...
|
| Sorry, my words above feel gross. I don't normally write
| sarcastic comments, and I don't like to, but I was a little put
| off by the "good riddance" comment.
|
| I just mean... aren't some entities cost centres that pay
| dividends later, sometimes non-monetarily. Kinda like children.
| Not everything needs to compete is the market and be judged a
| failure if it doesn't succeed through the single metric markets
| care about, right?
|
| Anyhow, respect (despite my sarcastic start :) )
| bitwize wrote:
| If the Red Cross were run by a lawyer, who gutted the budget
| for doctors and nurses and focused the organization on PR
| initiatives, yeah, fuck the Red Cross.
|
| That's where Mozilla is.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Here's the regular reminder for people to carefully pay
| attention to the distinction between the Mozilla
| _Foundation_ and the Mozilla _Corporation_.
|
| The _Corporation_ makes the browser (and presumably gets
| the Google money), the _Foundation_ collects the donations
| and does PR /social justice/bettering-the-world
| initiatives.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| The Foundation also gets paid by the Corporation for the
| right to use the Firefox brand.
|
| You can't donate to the Corporation to fund Firefox
| development, and even if you could, any 'excess' profits
| the Corporation made would get siphoned out to the
| Foundation anyway.
| ksherlock wrote:
| Cool story but Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned
| subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation. Mitchell Baker is Chair
| of both. For-profit Mozilla Corporation exists to wash
| revenue that can't go directly to the non-profit
| Foundation. c.f. Hollywood accounting.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| The distinction matters, it's not just a 'cool story'.
| Money donated to the Mozilla Foundation _legally_ cannot
| go to the Mozilla Corporation, and therefore cannot fund
| Firefox development.
| zach_garwood wrote:
| Wouldn't most businesses disappear if their partnerships dried
| up? This is just a weird criticism.
| pupppet wrote:
| Eh if a car company could only stay in business because they
| had giant Coke ads emblazoned on the sides of their cars I
| wouldn't chalk it up as a win for the company.
| minhazm wrote:
| That's a perfect analogy for Google. They only stay in
| business because they're able to plaster Coke (and other
| companies ads) all over their websites.
| umeshunni wrote:
| What if a car company could only stay in business because
| of the interest it collects on financing?
| pessimizer wrote:
| Then I'd hardly call it a car company.
| sysop073 wrote:
| No? Most businesses sell products or services, their primary
| source of revenue isn't bribes from a single company. That's
| pretty rare actually.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| You've been downvoted because simply selling a product to
| make money is considered absurd in this industry. What a
| horrible state of affairs.
| polote wrote:
| The current Mozilla might disappear but if it brings back the
| old Mozilla it can only be a good news
| prox wrote:
| Yeah it seems like the right kind of attrition. I would
| definitely pay patreon-wise for Firefox.
| speed_spread wrote:
| Right kind of attrition? Execs would fire every dev rather
| than themselves take a pay cut. The fact that this would
| actually kill the project is beyond them because they'd
| stay in office a little longer.
| klysm wrote:
| Unfortunately you would be in the vast minority. I'm not
| sure there'd be enough individuals willing to do it to keep
| up with chrome
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| A big part of the reason browsers are so expensive to
| build and maintain is because Google keeps expanding the
| set of features browsers are expected to implement (and
| Mozilla offers no meaningful resistance to this.) Google
| creates a problem so large that only Google has the funds
| to solve it.
| summerlight wrote:
| Sadly, old Mozilla won't come back even if we get rid of the
| current one. Building web infrastructures is now a completely
| different story than 20 years ago. You're not going to build
| a new functional web browser from scratch without hundreds of
| millions of bucks every year.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > You're not going to build a new functional web browser
|
| Then thank god that Firefox is FOSS, so whoever picks it up
| won't have to. The abolition of Mozilla would mean that
| more thoughtful forks won't have to compete with upstream
| for either cash or attention. Although I'd bet $1000 that
| if Mozilla died, they'd give Firefox and its trademarks to
| the Apache Foundation Openoffice-style to protect Chrome
| even after the company's last breath.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| it's true~ish but laughable because google sucks compared to ten
| years ago, bing and yandex aren't useless either
|
| i only use it to find things on specific websites like SO or
| reddit
|
| if I want to find a newer website I try newer search engines
| RunSet wrote:
| I remember when Firefox's motto was "your web the way you like
| it."
|
| Now users have to install an extension to set a home page, which-
| and I'm sure this is pure coincidence- might interfere with users
| interaction with the search bar, known in bygone days as the URL
| bar. By the way, Firefox's default search engine is google.
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| Mozilla also wants to deplatform/ban anyone they disagree with
| politically, which is the entire opposite of "your web the way
| you like it".
| kornhole wrote:
| The article did not mention specific numbers, but Google is
| estimated to pay Apple about $20B this year to stay integrated
| into their systems. That amount surely buys a lot of favors.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Isn't this the kind of argument that bites the government in the
| foot?
|
| On the one hand, plenty of antitrust people argue that Google is
| a natural monopoly and needs to be broken up because the regular
| rules of competition aren't working.
|
| On the other hand, here's the DOJ seemingly arguing the opposite
| -- that Google needs to fight so hard to maintain competitive
| dominance that it's forced to pay billions of dollars just to
| keep its market position.
|
| You can't have it both ways. And companies strike exclusivity
| deals _all the time_ , that's normal capitalism. Really this is
| just ammunition for why Google _isn 't_ abusing anything, it's
| just competing normally.
| scarmig wrote:
| Sure you can. The ability to establish a noncompetitive
| monopoly via paying billions of dollars to maintain a market
| position that allows them to make those payments and still make
| billions of dollars of profit is perfectly compatible with and
| even evidence for a monopoly. DDG isn't going to be able to
| write those checks.
|
| Though perhaps simply banning these types of exclusivity deals
| would be sufficient to return to a competitive market. It seems
| lighter touch than breaking up Google.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Google needs to fight so hard to maintain competitive
| dominance
|
| These are words you're putting in their mouths.
|
| > pay billions of dollars just to keep its market position.
|
| This is what they're doing. It's not a desperate fight, it's a
| bribe of what is a trivial amount for Google. It's a network of
| patronage run by a monopolist, not desperate street-fighting
| bribes, or whatever it is that the DOJ can't have both ways.
|
| Imagine a similar scenario where a local businessman is paying
| off local politicians and judges. Would you actually make the
| argument that the fact that the businessman is paying everyone
| off shows that his position is so precarious that he can't
| possibly be running the town? Monopolistic behavior as evidence
| against monopoly?
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