[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Has Google search switched to infinite scrol...
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: Has Google search switched to infinite scrolling for you
too now?
It seems google search has changed to using infinite scrolling for
me, an incredibly annoying change. Has anyone else got it? Is
there a way to get the old pagination back?
Author : KomoD
Score : 136 points
Date : 2023-06-17 14:56 UTC (8 hours ago)
| PugPaladin wrote:
| I'm surprised that I'm asking this because I've been such a fan
| of Google for years....but does anyone have alternative
| suggestions for Google products? (
|
| Looking for alternative suggestions for:
|
| 1. Google Maps (yikes was it bad when I used it this week) 2.
| Google Docs (such a frustrating lack of features) 3. Google Drive
| (it's impossible to find anything when you are sharing docs with
| someone) 4. Google Search (ChatGPT has spoiled me and I find
| Google Search to be a large waste of time) 5. Google Classroom
| (their quizzes/homeworks/forms are unbelievable bad and I can't
| tell what students can see vs what they can't) 6. Gmail (I've
| love gmail for so long but with all the other products just being
| so bad it's making me wonder what else I'm missing something
| better)
|
| Sorry to sh!t on Google so much, but everything is just so
| mediocre that I'm tired of it and want something higher quality.
| Anyone have thoughts?
| inglor wrote:
| Excel Online is free, got a lost faster and has the vast
| majority of Excel features. (Full disclosure I work on it)
| PugPaladin wrote:
| Wow that's great. I had no idea - thank you.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Google maps has deteriorated considerably for me recently. It
| used to be flawless, but now it routes me through random
| neighborhoods and awkward narrow streets, like I haven't seen
| navigation this bad since MapQuest.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Gmail has been so bad at stopping spam and useless email that
| I've had to essentially abandon one of my email addresses.
| ziml77 wrote:
| > ChatGPT has spoiled me and I find Google Search to be a large
| waste of time
|
| I hope you're not blindly trusting answers. I experimented with
| ChatGPT for a while and (even when using the GPT-4 model) I
| would get answers that were false but didn't sound too
| unreasonable. I could have easily been misled if I didn't
| already know the answers to the things I was asking it.
| PugPaladin wrote:
| No I don't. It's wrong so much of the time but gives me
| enough to figure out a lot of stuff. It's more like a rubber
| duck most of the time.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| OpenStreetMap [1] is a potential alternative to Google Maps for
| some.
|
| [1] - https://www.openstreetmap.org/
| impissedoff1 wrote:
| Magic earth,osmand+, Openstreetmaps
|
| Wps, only office, Zoho docs
|
| Offline only office is really nice
|
| Nextcloud
|
| Searxng
|
| Zoho mail is like Gmail a decade ago, protonmail is decent too
| PugPaladin wrote:
| Don't know most of these - thanks for the info
| newoldhead wrote:
| i use magic earth for maps, libre programs for word/excel etc
| (not cross-device though), searxng for searches (pick an
| instance and try it), tutanota for email (they focus on privacy
| - emails and your inbox are encrypted).
| ProxCoques wrote:
| Multiple businesses I have worked for in the last 20 years A/B
| tested infinite vs paginated scroll and found that the infinite
| leads to more stuff being seen, and therefore bought. Google was
| holding out because of the way they sold ads, but we knew they'd
| change eventually.
| blakesterz wrote:
| Yeah, got that here quite a while ago. Though it also comes and
| goes. It's... I don't know, better and worse at the same time? I
| notice it, and I feel like after a few page downs I just need a
| new search, so I need to go back up and start over. I guess it's
| a step down?
| mindslight wrote:
| Infinite scrolling needs to die in a fire. I'm sure it increases
| some fallacious "engagement" metric like time spent on the page
| or something, but it's an utterly horrible experience. Scroll
| down one and a half pages, watch a spinning circle as the next
| few results load, then watch the spinning circles as the result
| images load, repeat until you can't take it anymore and give up.
|
| On the whole this assertion of always-available javascript has
| basically destroyed the usability of the web as every small
| minded manager/designer thinks that inserting themselves in the
| way of the user makes for some endearing "experience". It
| doesn't.
| londons_explore wrote:
| For anyone frustrated with Google searches poor result set -
| especially for very obscure search terms where it often returns
| "0 results" even though you know that what you're looking for is
| on the internet...
|
| Try Baidu. Its search index is much bigger, and even if you don't
| speak chinese it is very usable. I frequently find what I'm
| looking for there when Google fails me.
| paxys wrote:
| And as a bonus, problematic results are already removed by PRC
| censors so you don't have to worry.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Not really - it's chock full of spam.
|
| But when Google says no results, I'd prefer to wade through a
| fre pages of spam than to simply not find what I'm looking
| for.
| paganel wrote:
| Just noticed it now, I'm on mobile. They really spilled the beans
| on this one, I guess that's one way of saying that they give up
| for good when it comes to helping people to find stuff on the
| web.
| breadwinner wrote:
| They had to make this change because they increased the number of
| ads. If the result is paginated, a high percentage of links in
| the first page would be ads. With infinite scroll that's not a
| problem because there are an infinite number of links on "the
| first page".
|
| Overall, Google has turned up the number of ads. Not just in
| search, but also in YouTube and also in Gmail. In YouTube, you
| didn't have ads in low-view-count videos. Now they have ads in
| all videos, whether the video owner turned it on or not. In
| Gmail, in the Promotions tab, only the top couple of items were
| ads, now there are ads interspersed with the rest of the mails.
|
| Increasing revenue by turning up the volume of ads is very short
| sighted. Personally, I find Google properties less interesting
| now, and it is tarnishing the Google brand. So why are they doing
| this? Perhaps they need to fill a revenue shortfall caused by
| ChatGPT?
| tslmy wrote:
| > there are an infinite number of links on "the first page".
|
| Advertisers won't buy it. They'll demand Google to measure
| "number of links _on first load_ " instead.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| Advertisers been paying for overpriced Google real estate for
| decades. Just look at all those brands advertising on their
| own brand names to ensure they are at the top. Quite the
| Google tax.
| samwillis wrote:
| It's basically a protection racket. Don't buy your name?
| Someone else will.
| TX81Z wrote:
| It's all very simple, the people who make the biggest decisions
| have the biggest percentage of their income derived from stock
| grants. Ergo they do whatever will make the stock price go up.
|
| Functionality, ethics/legality, and user needs are only
| important if they are part of the stock price calculus in the
| short term.
| vram22 wrote:
| Nowadays while watching videos in YouTube, I get more
| occurrences of ads, even in short videos, compared to just a
| few days back. Very irritating. Started looking out for other
| options than YouTube.
| Dudester230602 wrote:
| I often forget YouTube even has any ads, but then again I am
| using uBlock Origin.
| rtsil wrote:
| Youtube without uBlock origin is a traumatizing experience,
| and it's gotten worse in the last month or so. It went from
| bearable to let's plug the laptop to the TV unbearable. A
| couple of weeks ago, I had 3 blocks of ads in 10 minute-
| videos for the first time. Now, I have 3 blocks of ad
| (before/middle/after) in 5 minute videos.
| climb_stealth wrote:
| What boggles my mind is that for many many people this is
| their lived experience. They experience an internet
| inundated by ads. It's in equal parts incredible, sad and
| depressing.
|
| Shakes fist at sky.
|
| Saying that as someone who has always used ad blockers
| but is also paying for the youtube premium family plan.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| I find it infinitely amusing the number of people, in HN
| for God's sake, that DO NOT use uBlock origin on every
| device they own. Every time I read that "40% of people use
| adblockers", I think about the average HN user and say to
| myself: "No way that stat is real".
| namtab00 wrote:
| if only there was a way to block ads on WebOS on a LG
| TV...
|
| I only consume YouTube via its official app on the TV.
| There are no alternatives that allow ad blocking.
|
| It's utter shit without Premium... And I'm saying this
| while holding some non marginal number of GOOGL class A..
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| They got me to pay for premium just to avoid ads. But I'm
| really struggling to justify paying for it, and its more
| likely that I'll abandon the platform altogether.
| shostack wrote:
| I'd considered it, but so many videos are just filler to
| drive ad impressions that I can't justify it because the
| content quality is still lacking for what I want.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| Only a matter of time now before Premium goes from no-ads
| to 'reduced-ads' ... bet on it
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| I'm so hopelessly addicted to YouTube that premium only
| made sense. I should probably work on that, though.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| Last night was the first time I can remember where I
| intentionally avoided YT. I just couldn't stand trying to
| find what I wanted amongst all the click bait and
| advertisements.
|
| The good news is I found what I wanted and didn't have to
| deal with a barrage of bullshit and click bait videos.
|
| Yea I used it later on and found some user info but I'm
| finding that I hesitate to bother with it now.
| quechimba wrote:
| I'm paying and I find it worth it because YT Music is
| included so I could cancel my Spotify subscription.
| interestica wrote:
| YouTube web on chrome seems to not have (interstitial video)
| ads while iOS native app has an absurd number. It almost
| seems like a 'bug'
| cheschire wrote:
| Adblockers work to block them. If you use an Adblock in
| chrome that's likely why you don't see them.
|
| I use an iOS Adblock tool and have replaced my native
| YouTube app with a shortcut to the safari site. That way
| Adblock works there too.
| RektBoy wrote:
| You're seeing ADs on google? Lol.
| vitro wrote:
| > number of ads ... also in Gmail
|
| I wonder when they cut IMAP/POP3 access to Gmail.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| They won't. They'll find some bullshit "security"
| justification to force 2FA with 30 minute oauth tokens or
| something else that will make using IMAP too annoying for
| most, and which'll be difficult to automate.
| rtsil wrote:
| That's exactly what they did with imap. I had scripts
| checking my gmail accounts using imap with password-based
| authentication, and for a while they allowed that as long
| as you expressly accepted that it was less secure, but not
| it's gone completely.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Wall Street demands growth of top line or greater
| profitability. This is Google's way of meeting shareholder
| demands. Yes short sighted. And yes opens the door for chatGPT
| samwillis wrote:
| It's not just investors, Google is the quintessential example
| of a company that has taken metric based decision making too
| far. Everyone in the organisation has metrics to meet, and
| those KPIs affect promotions and pay. If your KPIs are
| entirely driven by revenue/profit it distorts the decision
| making of everyone and focuses on what large impact an
| individual or team can make to their bottom line, no mater
| what the collateral is.
|
| This is I think a good example of that in action.
|
| Another is the Google Domains shutdown. Domain names are a
| low margin commodity market, with a lot of competition.
| Someone somewhere in Google decided that for their own
| personal metrics selling the product was good for them.
| Removing a fairly thinly profitable team, and at the same
| time a windfall generated by them personally. It clearly
| should have been treated as an important value add for UX.
|
| I do believe the penny is dropping and advertisers are
| beginning to see just how little Google cares about how well
| they are doing. As long as you continue to spend more, Google
| are happy, even if I'm you are making less yourself. Your
| advertising rep isn't their to help you improve your ads and
| make them more cost effective, they are there to extract more
| of your margin from you.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| Sounds like Google will crank up ads right up until the
| point it starts affecting their business. Then they'll back
| it off some.
|
| Personally I hate it, but seems like the optimal way to run
| an advertising company.
| gerdesj wrote:
| "Everyone in the organisation has metrics to meet, and
| those KPIs affect promotions and pay. If your KPIs are
| entirely driven by revenue/profit it ..."
|
| That is how a publicly traded corporation works, whether
| you or I like it or not. When you get a listing on stock
| exchanges you are asking for investment from Tom, Dick and
| Harry. In return you sell your soul errr provide a return
| on that investment, in return for more investment.
|
| I remember when I dumped Altavista from my browser and
| started using the cool new Google "Do no evil". I still
| have a pretty early gmail address, when it was invite only
| and 1GB looked like close to infinity or at least pretty
| bloody huge. I don't put anything useful into a Google
| thingie because I value my stuff. I'll be changing my
| search engine quite soon too.
|
| It is all rather soulless and that is what saddens me. The
| whole raison d'etre for Google in the early days was to do
| good stuff, innovative engineering and so on. Then the
| profit motive or bust took over. It doesn't _have_ to but
| it did. Sadly the two cool kids with wonderful ideas were
| infected with the lust for world dominance or avarice or
| both.
|
| I don't know what Google would look like if it had stayed
| private and stuck to what appear to be its initial values.
| I do suspect that Brin and his mate would still have been
| rich beyond my wildest dreams, along with a lot of other
| people. MS would have probably bought them or tried to.
| presbyterian wrote:
| Mine has infinite scroll, but not infinite scroll of results. At
| a certain point it switches to boxes of recommended articles
| based on what it considers similar searches, which are literally
| never useful to me
| kylecazar wrote:
| Same, but there is an option for me above the recommended
| articles to see 'More search results', which loads another ten
| or so.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| I stopped using Google on mobile about a year ago as a result.
| tester756 wrote:
| Despite all the hate Google and infinite scroll gets, it seems to
| be good decision doesn't it?
|
| You rarely go to even the second page, I'm almost always
| improving/changing the query instead of going to next pages, so
| even in those edge cases where I have to go to next pages, then
| auto loading next results when I'm at the bottom of the page
| seems viable solution
|
| Infinite scroll is annoying because e.g you cannot link to thing
|
| but that's not the case with Google - you do not link Google
| results to people, you send them the result itself - desired
| website.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Yup this is definitely an improvement for me.
|
| Having to page through ephemeral search results is just added
| friction. I'm already scrolling anyways so this is much better
| UX.
| thih9 wrote:
| > Infinite scroll is annoying because e.g you cannot link to
| thing
|
| Infinite scroll is also annoying because it often breaks when
| navigating back to the page.
|
| Since this is a very popular use case in the context of a
| search page, I'm not a fan of this change.
| bluepod4 wrote:
| It seems trivial for Google to fix if this is truly broken.
| They could just update the page params while scrolling.
| [deleted]
| thih9 wrote:
| In theory yes.
|
| In practice when I go to youtube's search page (safari
| mobile), scroll down past infinite scrolling, click a
| random video and go back, I don't see the video that I
| clicked on my screen.
|
| I haven't seen the google's search page with infinite
| scrolling. But even if it works now, I'd be worried that it
| would break in future, since so many popular websites don't
| care about that.
| bluepod4 wrote:
| In practice, it works if it's implemented like on the
| desktop version of YouTube.
|
| Maybe there's a reason why popular websites don't care?
|
| Why "worry" about (possibly) expected features
| "breaking"? Seems extreme. Bugs happen. Sometimes they
| get fixed. Sometimes they don't.
| KomoD wrote:
| > You rarely go to even the second page
|
| You might not, I do, I do a lot, I even go further. I
| personally don't like the change at all
| tester756 wrote:
| I'm curious - in what cases do you go even further?
| srvmshr wrote:
| If your first language is English, and you end up using
| Google in a non-Anglophonic country, the option to change
| language (without going through sign-in hoops) is a drop-
| down at the bottom. The infinite scrolling, where results
| get lazy-loaded is really irksome in that case.
| [deleted]
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| I used to often do a minimum of 5 pages when I was doing
| any sort of serious research to start checking the more
| esoteric and less SEO optimized results. The infinite
| scroll has definitely been annoying for me
| PaulHoule wrote:
| In theory there might be more than ten interesting results
| on a topic, and with some search engines, say the one at
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
|
| there really are. For Google the results past the top ten
| have been unusable for a very long time, frequently just a
| repetition of the same garbage.
|
| Circa 2004 I was interested in the question of why Google
| was so much better than other search engines, which got me
| into reading TREC proceedings which made it clear that
| Google probably wouldn't do very well on TREC because the
| original TREC scores assumes you care about the relevance
| of the 1000th result and Google was all about "I'm feeling
| lucky".
|
| A month or so ago I was talking to someone developing a
| search engine who was concerned that most tracks in TREC
| now are concerned about precision @ 1, precision @ 5 and
| things like that and was wondering how to tune up a search
| engine if the 1000th result matters.
|
| I guess things go full circle.
| valianteffort wrote:
| In cases where the result wasn't on the previous page.
|
| I can't decide what's more annoying though, the infinite
| scroll or the search result layout change.
| thunky wrote:
| What do you find preferable about clicking the next page
| link vs having it appear without a click?
| [deleted]
| crazygringo wrote:
| But this saves you a click so what do you dislike?
| kmoser wrote:
| With distinct pages it's easy to bookmark them and/or
| remember "oh, there was something interesting on page
| three." With infinite scroll, that interesting thing
| becomes lost in a maze of twisty passages and more
| difficult to return to because you are never on an
| individual static page, but rather a single ever-changing
| page.
| omaranto wrote:
| If you find an interesting search result on page 3 you
| seriously bookmark page 3 rather than bookmarking that
| link?
| crazygringo wrote:
| If you're going through a long list of unchanging
| results, like issues of a magazine sorted by date, and
| you want to save your place, then sure.
|
| But Google results are ephemeral and change constantly.
| I've never heard of anyone wanting to bookmark the second
| page of search results.
|
| I agree infinite scroll doesn't make sense on all sites,
| but for internet search results it's perfect.
| BestGuess wrote:
| That right there is the distraction though, more "efficient"
| for a corporate but worse for everybody else. Like you get a
| catch-22 but it's got its own catch-22. Issue ain't removing
| pages like you'd share page links, issue is making search "so
| efficient" clicking on page 5 or 10 direct is worthless then
| removing pages because google went and done made it worthless
| first. It's a buncha cattywampus and the real sad thing is
| Google only got better for itself you ask me, so it ain't
| really about sharing links to pages it's about pages having
| been made worthless
| fenomas wrote:
| > Infinite scroll is annoying because e.g you cannot link to
| thing
|
| There are other reasons. It's annoying to me because on mobile
| there's a link I use often _that 's only in the footer of the
| page_.
|
| And yep, the link is still there in the infinite scroll version
| of the results page - if you swipe violently downward several
| times then after 3-4 refreshes it gives up, and you can click
| footer links.
|
| (The link in question is "see results in English" - which I use
| often due to my region and because I use incognito tabs for
| random google searches.)
| gumby wrote:
| Have you tried adding lang:en to your query?
| hamasho wrote:
| My biggest problem with infinite scrolling in general is it
| clears scrolling state by browser back or page refresh.
|
| Sometimes there's no good result in the first page, or I want
| to keep searching for more investigation.
|
| When I find a seemingly interesting result after several
| scrolls and visit the page but find out it's not what I want, I
| want to go back to the search result and continue. But after
| browser back, the result is cleared and I have to scroll
| several times again. Even if I open the result in the different
| tabs and keep the search result, it may disappear after browser
| refresh or restart.
| noizejoy wrote:
| I've taken to "open link in new tab" on any search result or
| listing page for years. It doesn't solve all the issues, but
| makes things more tolerable.
| [deleted]
| bunga-bunga wrote:
| > it clears scrolling state by browser back
|
| Twitter handles this masterfully (or used to)
|
| > or page refresh.
|
| Technically you can use history.replaceState to store, ahem,
| state on the "current page", so nothing stops you from saving
| a cursor there to use when loading the content.
|
| The issue with infinite scroll is that very few people know
| how or care to "make it work correctly"
| SilasX wrote:
| I wish browsers did this as a default option. The back
| button should never have a noticeable delay.
| joker_minmax wrote:
| I'm often using Google search in Incognito/Private/InPrivate
| windows, so I'm getting to see all the, pardon my french,
| bullshit they're AB testing on users constantly. I've so far seen
| three distinct forms of infinite scroll (edit: on Mobile, for
| clarification). One is just infinite scroll with classic results
| in a list format as usual. The second type I have encountered is
| that after about 7 to 10 lines of results in typical list format,
| it will begin showing you everything in a grid format of
| squircles, where it's harder to read the text previews. The third
| form of infinite scroll I have seen, and in my opinion the worst,
| is that after fifteen or so results, it begins showing you
| results for a separate (but allegedly related) query, and forces
| you to hit a button to continue seeing results for what you
| actually wanted to see... and get this, the button to see more
| doesn't always work. Sometimes it gives an error message. (This
| one irritated me because I was looking at translations for a song
| into English, and then the results started showing translations
| for different songs from the same other language, but not even by
| the same artist -- very helpful, Google!) Currently for me, in
| mobile Chrome, both Incognito tabs and normal tabs display
| infinite scroll of the list type, where results appear more or
| less in "normal" format, albeit more spaced out than they were a
| few years ago.
| O1111OOO wrote:
| Side note: It's so weird for me to hear the term "google search".
| It's what happens when you haven't used a site directly in years.
| I almost have to ask myself (facetiously), is Google Search still
| a thing?
|
| The same thing has happened with Microsoft. I used to be a
| Windows/GUI user (never in love with the company going back to
| DOS, I was a PC-DOS user (IBM)) until I switched over to Linux
| many years ago. Microsoft basically ceased to exist (except for
| github).
|
| I hear Microsoft in the news and it's almost like they exist in a
| parallel universe.
|
| Apple - never has existed (for me). Facebook/Twitter - accts but
| never use. Spotify - nope. Etc, etc...
|
| The only reason I bring this up is because, despite this, I still
| remain well-connected. I have lost nothing from the Web. I
| strongly feel that the hold these big tech companies have on many
| of us is tenuous at best. Google best not forget this.
|
| Reddit certainly has forgotten and with but a metaphorical wave
| of my hand, reddit now too ceases to exist (for me) - and I've
| lost little. Big Tech... replaceable (hmm... mostly).
|
| PS: Still rely/use Google (gmail, YouTube, Maps, Android), so
| there's one big tech firm I still depend on. YouTube, Maps and
| Android being the really hard ones to replace.
| mintplant wrote:
| Weirdly, the "downgraded" Google search experience I get in
| Firefox is more functional than the "full" one I can get through
| Chrome or the Google search bar on my phone. An infobox or two
| followed by a paginated list of relevant links, compared with all
| the noisy bells and whistles and sometimes multiple screen-fulls
| of sponsored content they throw into their modern SRPs.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Google pruned their index so radically that it doesn't make a
| difference anymore. For a bit less common stuff, but yet nothing
| esoteric, I get to the last page around page 4 or 5. And most of
| the stuff on those 5 pages are mostly SEO-farm copies of the same
| stuff. I quit looking for recipes on google. Bought a dozen of
| recipe books last year. fuck that shit.
| joker_minmax wrote:
| I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed it's harder to find
| recipes from smaller sites anymore.
| 65 wrote:
| YouTube is a great place to find recipes from individuals.
| They usually have the entire recipe in the description. And a
| video to go along with it!
| dustymcp wrote:
| I have been using openAI for this, its surprisingly accurate,
| and way faster for easy recipes and instructions.
| joker_minmax wrote:
| I'd rather support those small time blogs, people who do it
| as a hobby and for the creative joy of it, especially for
| recipes you don't see a lot in the English-speaking world.
| Using a language model for a recipe feels soulless to me.
| threads2 wrote:
| We won a set of fancy cast iron pans and gpt explained to
| us what each of them are for. Way better experience than
| googling or reading wikipedia.
| joker_minmax wrote:
| What made the experience better to you? I would feel
| compelled to Google search everything after the fact to
| make sure it wasn't lying to me.
| Saturn5 wrote:
| For me at least, I sometimes find it very difficult to
| google information I don't yet know a lot about. It is
| very difficult if you don't know the jargon to find
| anything that goes beyond the very surface level. Or if
| you did find the correct word, it goes too fast and you
| are not able to follow. It can be difficult to find an
| article in the "goldilocks zone" where I can follow along
| but also learn a lot. I do not do this, but I can imagine
| that AI could help with that as a starting of point. Then
| I would probably still google to confirm.
| pixl97 wrote:
| > I would feel compelled to Google search everything
| after the fact to make sure it wasn't lying to me
|
| https://gizmodo.com/googles-algorithm-is-lying-to-you-
| about-...
|
| >I knew from personal experience that this was a lie.
| Recipes always said it took 5 or 10 minutes to caramelize
| onions, and when you followed the recipes, you either got
| slightly cooked onions or you ended up 40 minutes behind
| schedule. So I caramelized some onions and recorded how
| long it really took--28 minutes if you cooked them as hot
| as possible and constantly stirred them, 45 minutes if
| you were sane about it--and I published those results on
| Slate, along with a denunciation of the false five-to-10
| minute standard.
|
| Trusting Google is just as apt to get you in trouble.
| joker_minmax wrote:
| Google didn't write the recipe, though; the
| blogger/author did. I have never trusted the snippets
| that Google started taking out of context and attempts to
| spoon-feed you at the top of the search, because much of
| the time they don't answer what I asked. Even then, the
| source is cited, allowing you to see the context
| yourself. Google is a tool for locating information from
| other sources. LLMs do not always correctly cite their
| sources, let alone provide them.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Try looking up medical queries, especially for anything more
| complex than a regular flu.
|
| The first page is just the same few domains. Meanwhile,
| websites dedicated to the disease and often maintained by
| supportive communities languish at the bottom of the pile.
|
| Why? Because Google decided that "authority" of domains is
| important, not the content. So a generic article on WebMD
| will rank higher than a forum page filled with mountains of
| information from actual patients and medical professionals.
| marak830 wrote:
| As an ex chef, escoffier as a basis, then salt fat acid heat by
| Samin nosrat.
|
| Recipes are a guide for unfamiliar, but once you learn the
| profiles of each ingredient you can expand greatly.
|
| I know it's a bit off your comments and I certainly search
| myself for new basis to play with, but I hope it helps :-)
| esafak wrote:
| _Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat_ opened my eyes; it showed me an
| insightful way to deconstruct flavor and therefore the
| building blocks to construct it. Highly recommended!
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Respectfully this is obnoxious advice for the majority of
| home cooks. We just want to know what to cook and how.
| gumby wrote:
| It's the opposite.
|
| There's nothing wrong at all with "cook by numbers" and
| it's especially great if you didn't learn to cook as a
| child. It's like learning at a coding boot camp where you
| learn to write some simple business logic based on a spec,
| or learning algebra in grade 8: basically syntactic
| transforms with no theory.
|
| But Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat will teach you to look in the
| fridge when you're hungry but unmotivated and quickly make
| something from what happens to be there that isn't boring,
| faster and cheaper than ordering junk food delivery.
|
| Yes you could turn into a fancy chef but the suggested
| advice is great for someone like me, who doesn't really
| care particularly about food.
| testacct22 wrote:
| This is true for me. Been making a lot of soups and soup
| like dishes, most have a similar profile:
|
| 1. Saute aromatic base (like onion, garlic, pepper,
| celery etc)
|
| 2. Deglaze
|
| 3. Add meats, non aromatic vegetables (e.g. carrot,
| potato)
|
| 4. Add broth, simmer
|
| 5. Garnish
| pinkcan wrote:
| 1. that comment is not about you
|
| 2. don't tell people their perception of things is wrong,
| instead consider why they're perceiving things that way,
| and if you can, do something* that may change their
| perception
|
| * here, you can't
| Spivak wrote:
| In fact I would go further and say that this stuff is
| more fundamental. Online recipes make cooking look
| mysterious and complicated when they're actually "cook
| each ingredient in the obvious way, measure with your
| heart, combine the things that go together, and assemble
| the final dish." It's not "easy just re-derive the
| formula when you need it" like you see in maths, it's
| that most dishes you don't need a recipe at all.
|
| Baking is the only thing that requires some science know-
| how but it has its own building blocks [1] that demystify
| overly complicated recipes.
|
| There aren't that many "shapes" of dishes.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Ratio-Simple-Behind-Everyday-
| Cooking/...
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I used to think like that but then I expanded my skills
| during the pandemic. I now have a much better grasp of
| ingredients and spices and how they all interact with each
| other.
|
| All it took was asking "why" a specific ingredient was used
| at a specific stage in the recipe. You get a lot of answers
| from that.
| naet wrote:
| For me personally as a home cook I do best when I learn
| some of the concepts and then I can use whatever I have
| instead of trying to get a bunch of specific ingredients.
|
| For example one of my staples is braised chicken and
| vegetables. I know I can use any of certain vegetables I
| might have (mushrooms, onions, celery, carrots, broccoli,
| cauliflower, kale, brussel sprouts, potatoes or sweet
| potatoes, shallots, etc), any of a couple liquids (water,
| chicken or vegetable stock, red or white wine, beer, etc)
| and spice it up with (heavy cream, fresh or dried herbs,
| mustard, garlic, pepper, bacon, butter, lemon, etc). And I
| know roughly how I want to cook it: flour the chicken and
| cook until brown and crispy in a pan, take it out and brown
| any firmer vegetables, add some spices, add the rest of the
| vegetables and my cooking liquid and bring to a small boil,
| put everything in a big oven dish, pop the chicken on top,
| bake at around 400 for 30-50 minutes until the chicken
| seems done, add any last things that might burn like cream
| in the final 5 minutes and then plate up and eat.
|
| Now I don't have to go to the store and look for anything,
| don't have to worry too much about measuring ingredients,
| don't have to worry about cook time or technique. I can
| whip up a big family dinner pretty quickly with whatever I
| have on hand and experiment a bit with different flavors
| with confidence that it will turn out good.
| spdif899 wrote:
| Yeah those books are definitely great and the building
| blocks Nosrat provides are crucial for any home chef that
| wants to take a scientific approach to decision making in
| the kitchen. But most of the time, I just want to pick a
| recipe as a starting point
| [deleted]
| baerrie wrote:
| Google's search results page is a mess now. It is now an endless
| feed mimicking social apps cluttered by obtrusive images and
| suggested content that is never really what you want
| jatins wrote:
| It has been infinite scroll for a while for me, which was fine
| but seems like they did that just to pave way for their second
| trick: displaying ads interspersed with actual results. IMO the
| only things distinguishing ads from actual results now is a small
| "Ad" label. Previously the placement also used to be an
| indicator, where by muscle memory you'd typically skip first few
| results.
|
| Few bad quarters and I am sure some PM at Google will write a
| brief for A/B testing removal of Ad label
| darreninthenet wrote:
| The UK ASA will kick that to death very quickly, they are very
| hot on paid placement being labelled
| MrPatan wrote:
| Isn't that an admission that the first page is not good enough in
| so many cases now that they had to make pagination easier?
| wildrhythms wrote:
| It's probably an experiment to see how many results people will
| scroll without the need to click to the next page.
| crtified wrote:
| It's weird being an old-school desktop computer user who never
| jumped on the mobile bandwagon. Not just because it makes me
| somewhat a dinosaur, but also because anecdotes about the average
| users internet experience these days sound like tales from some
| slightly-dystopic parallel universe.
| mikewarot wrote:
| It looks like it's all Ads to me now.... that's worthless. Ugh...
| I might have to switch to Bing
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It's comical how they finally get around to infinite scroll after
| destroying the quality and quantity of the results. I very
| regularly get to the end of the results 20-30 in.
|
| I used to utilize the vaguely related deep-dive results,
| especially in image searches, to go on tours of nostalgia or just
| wandering. But Google can't offer that anymore.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| Yes, you can disable it. It's right there at the top of the
| Search Settings page.
|
| However, the selection of individual pages is gone, and replaced
| by a single "More results" arrow at the bottom of the page. So it
| does appear that they've gutted the functionality, and it's only
| continuous scrolling whether you choose manual or automatic
| style.
| guiambros wrote:
| > _However, the selection of individual pages is gone_
|
| Are you logged in? I have disabled infinite scrolling, and I
| still have selection of individual pages.
|
| But if I open an incognito window and disable infinite
| scrolling, I get the same "More results" as you, so I'm
| wondering if it's related to being logged in or not.
| doix wrote:
| A/B testing, I have different behaviour between my work
| Google account and personal account. Hadn't really noticed
| until this thread though.
| KomoD wrote:
| Ugh :( I really liked having individual pages
| nomilk wrote:
| Out of interest, why? I find infinite scroll a pareto
| improvement (an improvement with no downsides)
| robin_reala wrote:
| For keyboard users it acts as a focus trap, breaking the
| expected interaction model of the page. You can't ever
| reach the footer, at least until the results stop.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Is there a footer on infinite-scroll google?
| robin_reala wrote:
| There is. After 4-5 pages of loading Google gave up and
| showed me a "More search results" button with a footer
| below it, along with the legally required things like a
| link to the privacy policy. But who knows whether it'll
| be 4-5 pages in the future?
|
| This is a common problem with infinite scroll websites,
| not just Google of course.
| robinsonb5 wrote:
| On mobile it might be. On Desktop it (1) devalues the
| scrollbar, since you can no longer use its size in
| proportion to its container to judge how large the page is
| compared with your view of it, and (2) adds jank while the
| next set of results is loaded (the pause while loading
| feels random rather than an expected event in response to
| your changing page).
|
| The other thing that's annoying me is the overriding of
| cursor keys, making each scrolling step much larger than it
| would normally be. Yes, it might be more logical for a
| keypress to step to the next result, but that's not how the
| cursor keys are expected to behave in the browser, so it's
| jarring.
| Severian wrote:
| > On mobile it might be. On Desktop it (1) devalues the
| scrollbar, since you can no longer use its size in
| proportion to its container to judge how large the page
| is compared with your view of it, and (2) adds jank while
| the next set of results is loaded (the pause while
| loading feels random rather than an expected event in
| response to your changing page).The other thing that's
| annoying me is the overriding of cursor keys, making each
| scrolling step much larger than it would normally be.
| Yes, it might be more logical for a keypress to step to
| the next result, but that's not how the cursor keys are
| expected to behave in the browser, so it's jarring.
| darkerside wrote:
| It does ruin the back button
| fastball wrote:
| I can't really speak to the benefit for a search engine,
| but for our app we opted to keep actual pages because it
| allows users to remember approximately where some content
| is and go directly to that page.
| furyofantares wrote:
| Heh, a pareto improvement is "a new situation where some
| agents will gain, and no agents will lose"
|
| I get your meaning but it's kind of a funny phrase to mean
| "no downsides to this one agent, me"
| KomoD wrote:
| Because I can skip tons of pages, I can go back to the same
| page later.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Why would you ever skip a page of search results?
| juujian wrote:
| Hasn't for me, and I don't seem to have the option to turn it on
| either.
| lemper wrote:
| nah, still got paging. I use Singaporean IP and on firefox on
| android.
| dserban wrote:
| I'm in Europe and don't see the infinite scrolling setting
| unless I set my VPN to the US. Geofenced A/B testing.
| rtsil wrote:
| I'm in France and I started seeing it earlier this morning.
| KomoD wrote:
| I'm in Sweden
| fidla wrote:
| I use Perplexity AI for most searches
| JOnAgain wrote:
| 7 reasons why you think google has switched to infinite scroll.
|
| Before we get to the 7 reasons, let's describe what Google is ...
| ttctciyf wrote:
| A couple of weeks ago it stopped showing the search page numbers
| at the bottom for me, but didn't infinitely scroll. I went into
| settings and changed it to infinite scroll manually so I could
| get past the first page of results. Trying in a different browser
| profile, I didn't have the issue. I got used to infinite
| scrolling in my main profile.. and then it mysteriously went back
| to multi-page results with working numbered links all by itself.
|
| I haven't dared go back into settings to see if it's still set to
| infinite scroll (I assume not) because I don't want to break it
| any more.
|
| I'm used to things randomly breaking in youtube, in the play
| queue, for example, but I thought this was kind of a shocking
| level of breakage to find in an online behemoth's primary
| offering, especially given how essentially simple its
| presentation task is.
|
| Seems they might be still fiddling with it, though - searched the
| term _slashdot_ and found "About 14,000,000 results (0.28
| seconds)", but the bottom of the page only shows links to three
| pages of results, expanding to seven when I click "next".
|
| I wonder what they think they're doing? Probably too much remote
| working, I expect. That'll be it.
| yard2010 wrote:
| WDYM too much remote working?
| liveoneggs wrote:
| I get a weird colored-card-based layout on mobile when they run
| out of normal search results.
| 1024core wrote:
| Infinite scrolling means infinite ads... :-D
| renegat0x0 wrote:
| I really think that they may now sprinkle good results between
| worse ones just to show more ads, and force you to scroll, and
| scroll, and read more ads. Why to provide good results
| immediately if it is not a good business decision? They need to
| balance good and bad results to not anger consumers too much
| and to get target revenue
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