[HN Gopher] The End of the Googleverse
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       The End of the Googleverse
        
       Author : CharlesW
       Score  : 53 points
       Date   : 2023-08-30 15:33 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
        
       | hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
       | I enjoyed this article, and I found myself nodding through the
       | parts that discussed Google's history over the past couple
       | decades.
       | 
       | However, the last couple concluding paragraphs, and the
       | comparison to AltaVista, I found to be _extremely_ weak. It was
       | as if the author had diagnosed all these problems, and felt like
       | they couldn 't just end the article but had to wrap it up with
       | something they felt was a potential solution.
       | 
       | In my opinion, _there is no potential solution_ , and that's both
       | a good and bad thing. At worldwide scale, I find it hard to
       | believe that any company wouldn't fall down the path Google has:
       | they are pretty fundamentally a victim to Goodhart's Law [1], and
       | that dynamic is inevitable.
       | 
       | I think the bad thing about that is it does kind of make me yearn
       | for some of "the good old days" when not _everything_ was just
       | teeming with SEO nonsense and blogspam. For example, when looking
       | for particular software solutions, I 've found it impossible to
       | use Google to do "ProductA vs. ProductB" type searches anymore -
       | all the top links are just some sort of affiliate link spam, the
       | analysis (if there is any) flat out sucks.
       | 
       | So the good news is that it's made me step away from the Internet
       | more: e.g. for the example above, I don't even do a search: I'll
       | ask for recommendations from friends and colleagues, post to a
       | helpful employee alumni mailing list, etc. You know, the way we
       | used to do things "in the good old days".
       | 
       | If anything the complete disgust and enshittification I find with
       | so much online content and algorithms these days has actually led
       | to me being mentally healthier - I just spend less time online
       | (HN being the bad habit I'm trying to break) and more time in
       | "the real world".
       | 
       | 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
        
       | Dudester230602 wrote:
       | Whatever culture they were trying to build with their
       | interviewing approach, politics engagement and staff promotions,
       | that is not a culture to aim for it turns out.
        
         | oneepic wrote:
         | I suspect there is a large difference between "old Google" and
         | "new Google" (maybe there is a cutoff year, like... 2012? I
         | don't know.).
         | 
         | I would love to compare people who passed the old interviews
         | and worked at old G, to the new ones, and just see what kind of
         | culture, personality, and technical competency each side had.
         | Then you get to see how those people shaped the company and how
         | public opinion changed.
        
           | plogborp wrote:
           | I think you're on the wrong track. Let the blame where it
           | belongs... management. Sundar, Ruth, and Thomas are simply
           | corporate ghouls working to enrich themselves. Sundar is a
           | billionaire... all that money came as an employee of Google.
           | 
           | They don't understand branding or trust, or if they do, they
           | simply don't care. The reputation for cancelling products to
           | the point of untrustworthiness demonstrates this.
           | 
           | Google is a classic case of the fish rotting from the head
           | down.
        
           | avita1 wrote:
           | Did Google interviews change dramatically around 2012?
        
             | jpadkins wrote:
             | no, but that is about when Larry and Sergey checked out
             | (wasn't an overnight thing, took a few years).
        
             | oneepic wrote:
             | I'm guessing 2012 because I _thought_ that was the year
             | they stopped doing brain teaser interviews, which were very
             | controversial at the time. Googling it now, the exact year
             | is fuzzy -- like, they _originally_ stopped in 2006, but
             | only fully stopped around... 2011-2012? My evidence is this
             | thread and its linked article: https://www.reddit.com/r/pro
             | gramming/comments/1gq72n/comment...
        
               | thedougd wrote:
               | I received an offer from Google around May 2012. My
               | interviews were long and numerous with interactive coding
               | and whiteboard sessions. No brain teasers. Larry Page was
               | still giving final yes or no on hiring.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | jasfi wrote:
       | I think this is premature. Google is still a huge force in tech.
       | Google search, GMail, DeepMind and more are huge and aren't going
       | anywhere. I have the same experience as PurpleRamen, I truely
       | don't see the decrease in search quality. I think people just
       | expect perfection every time. That's how high the bar is.
        
         | marginalia_nu wrote:
         | Google's biggest problem is that they're a huge force. Google
         | search directs an absurd amount of traffic to where-ever they
         | point their search ranking. The bigger they've gotten the
         | stronger the observer effect has grown.
         | 
         | Search engine spam isn't something that's happened to Google,
         | it's a consequence of their dominance in directing web traffic.
         | No matter which beautiful flower you find, point a power washer
         | at it and all you get is dirt and mud.
        
       | taylodl wrote:
       | I still remember the day when I read the Slashdot article
       | announcing this new incredible search engine called Google. I was
       | an AltaVista user at the time, along with most IT professionals,
       | and for those who don't know, it essentially had its own search
       | query language. The claim was Google returned back even _better_
       | results WITHOUT having to specify all those query parameters.
       | 
       | I tried it - it was unbelievable! A simple search box, type in
       | your keyword(s) you're interested in, no query syntax and -
       | voila! Good, relevant results! It was simply amazing! AltaVista
       | essentially died overnight.
       | 
       | But really, Google's biggest technology was AdSense. It's how
       | they make their money. It's why all their other services, save
       | for gmail and google docs, have come and gone. Search has become
       | less and less relevant in today's world. But there was a time
       | when it seemed magical!
        
         | dekhn wrote:
         | Yep, me too- I remember reading about Google (actually a friend
         | read the article and told me I'd like it because they ran on
         | Linux). At the time, AltaVista would often take 30 seconds and
         | then time out, or return pages of spammy results, while Google
         | was super-fast and accurate.
        
         | hotpotamus wrote:
         | I think I was in a middle school computer lab (could have been
         | high school) when one of the other students said, "hey, you
         | should try this new search engine out, it has millions of sites
         | and works really well". And it did - this comment brings me
         | back.
        
       | maximinus_thrax wrote:
       | Interestingly enough, this has dropped off the frontpage. Not
       | insinuating anything, I just find it weird.
        
       | enumjorge wrote:
       | Their fall from grace, at least when it comes to the tech
       | community, has been quite a sight. Has any other big tech company
       | seen such a change in opinion? I'm not sure Microsoft was ever
       | beloved and even though Apple might have lost some of its sheen,
       | there are definitely a lot of fans left.
        
         | xnx wrote:
         | Is there any reputable survey of the tech community on this
         | matter? Amongst the general population, Google seems to be
         | doing pretty well. #35 on this list
         | https://www.axios.com/2023/05/23/corporate-brands-reputation...
        
         | dweekly wrote:
         | IBM, Xerox, Bell Labs, DEC, Sun...
        
         | JohnFen wrote:
         | > I'm not sure Microsoft was ever beloved
         | 
         | They were very beloved, back when they were a scrappy upstart
         | in the 1970s.
        
           | kwhitefoot wrote:
           | I was there, I don't remember anyone ever loving Microsoft.
           | Perhaps that's because I was in the UK.
        
           | brk wrote:
           | I don't think enough people were aware of Microsoft pre-1981
           | for there to have been any kind of strong opinion. From the
           | point in time where Microsoft was well known, I don't recall
           | any period of time where "beloved" would be even remotely
           | accurate.
        
         | ghaff wrote:
         | Microsoft was pretty loved back "in the day" (80s to 90s).
         | Maybe not as much as an enterprise OS company but their
         | developer support was pretty awesome before most people had
         | access to "everything" via the Internet.
         | 
         | I'm not sure anyone else really qualifies as a big very
         | consumer-facing tech company in the modern sense from that era
         | or before though, of course, there were many once popular
         | companies like MySpace that just flamed out. Yahoo! might be an
         | example.
        
           | ocschwar wrote:
           | In the 90's and aughts there was very little love for
           | Microsoft among IT professionals.
           | 
           | It's a little embarrassing to think about right now when you
           | realize that Microsoft has never poisoned a river or sent
           | thugs with billy clubs to bust a union, and so all of us had
           | bigger fish to fry. But there was never love.
        
           | TedDoesntTalk wrote:
           | > developer support was pretty awesome
           | 
           | It was truly amazing. MSDN on CDs.
        
           | orev wrote:
           | Microsoft was one of the most hated companies by both IT
           | people and users in the 80s - 90s. About the only thing
           | people liked was the developer support (which I give them
           | credit for; Visual Studio is great). Computers running their
           | software needed daily reboots and quarterly re-installs.
           | Every single thing they did was to force people to get
           | locked-in to them. They single-handedly slowed web progress
           | by close to a decade (IE11). Anti-competitive that eventually
           | resulted in government prosecution.
           | 
           | The only thing that was ever revered about them was Bill
           | Gates, who was more loved by business schools as a case study
           | in how to run an extremely aggressive company.
        
             | ghaff wrote:
             | Though what _didn 't_ suck in the 80s/90s from a computer
             | user experience perspective?
             | 
             | Terminals connected to minicomputers--which is what I used
             | at work through most of that period? DOS-based word
             | processing and spreadsheets were pretty nice by comparson.
             | 
             | Macs? They were fine in the mid-80s although I didn't use
             | them in school unless my group was using them for some
             | project.
             | 
             | Unix workstations were getting pretty nice by the mid-90s
             | but those weren't something for a home user.
        
               | jrochkind1 wrote:
               | Amiga is famous for being loved by it's users in the 80s.
               | I think Apple II users and Commodore 64 users kind of
               | loved them too.
               | 
               | But expectations were much lower then, computers were
               | expected to be a thing for a 'hobbyist' to tinker with,
               | and those who did generally did it because they loved it.
               | 
               | (I still don't think what were then called "PCs" running
               | MS-DOS or (beginning in 1985) Windows were as beloved as
               | Amiga or Commodore 64 though, Microsoft-OS PCs were for
               | "business", and nobody really loved them).
               | 
               | (Macintosh was first sold in 1984, so mid-80s was the
               | first Macintosh).
        
           | medler wrote:
           | This is shocking for me to hear because it is the exact
           | opposite of my experience/memory. I recall Microsoft briefly
           | being the cool place for geniuses to work before it quickly
           | became the big bad evil monopolist. Maybe this perception was
           | exacerbated by my hanging out in more open-source-friendly
           | corners of the internet.
           | 
           | I know they've changed their tune on open source but it's
           | really hard for me to break from my 20+-year perception that
           | they are the evil company that makes awful software.
        
       | pessimizer wrote:
       | They forgot to mention Google Code. It was a nice place for a
       | while, made Google seem like a really nice company.
        
       | teslashill wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | PurpleRamen wrote:
       | [..]There is a growing chorus of complaints that Google is not as
       | accurate, as competent, as dedicated to search as it once
       | was.[..]
       | 
       | This is always a strange claim for me, because it does not even
       | remotely match my experience. And now we have the rise of Chat-
       | AIs, and people who claim it's so much better than google, which
       | also does not even remotely match my experience. And now I ask
       | myself: am I just too stupid to see it? Or are the people too
       | stupid to not see it? Do I search just too different things from
       | what others search that I can't see it?
       | 
       | And then I also remember the claim that the youth is insanely
       | uneducated about technology and the modern world, even worse than
       | old people, and I wonder whether this is the reason for those
       | claims. Do those claims all come from young people, who live in a
       | very different world and are just very clueless about those
       | things?
       | 
       | So at the end, does Google end, because it's not cool with the
       | youth anymore? Not hipster enough and getting lost in the
       | difference between the culture of the generations?
        
         | cityofdelusion wrote:
         | Depends on what you Google. If you search for mundane stuff
         | like recipes, how-to guides, or product suggestions then you
         | just get SEO spam. Google is still fairly good for very
         | technical stuff, but anything of monetary value has been
         | captured by professional advertisers and their affiliate link
         | filled content farms.
        
           | gtowey wrote:
           | Basically, the more popular a topic is, the more its search
           | results are infested with SEO spam.
           | 
           | Even in technical realms this holds true. One of the huge
           | disappointments of learning JavaScript/typescript recently is
           | how terrible and spammy searching for anything on it is.
           | Coming from the golang world where I'm used to search results
           | being highly relevant with few advertising spam blogs among
           | them.
        
           | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
           | > If you search for mundane stuff like recipes, how-to
           | guides, or product suggestions then you just get SEO spam.
           | 
           | I look for recipes a lot. While what I find matches the "SEO-
           | shaped recipe blog page" template mentioned in TFA,
           | nevertheless the results still have the recipe(s) I'm looking
           | for.
           | 
           | When I need to fix/build/repair stuff, searching just youtube
           | almost always gets me what I need or want.
        
         | crazygringo wrote:
         | The other thing I don't understand is the idea that Search is
         | somehow becoming _less_ accurate over time.
         | 
         | Google tracks analytics on the quality of its search results,
         | simply by observing which results users click on, how long it
         | takes them, or whether they don't click on anything at all.
         | 
         | The idea that Search is somehow worsening doesn't make any
         | sense.
         | 
         | What _has_ maybe happened is that Search has improved for the
         | population as whole, but gotten worse for certain subsets of
         | users -- but still a net gain overall. Or alternatively, that
         | the web itself has changed -- that Search is doing better than
         | ever, but some users just don 't like what the web offers in
         | response. (E.g. nobody writes straight-up recipes without tons
         | of intro anymore -- but that's also so they have tons of space
         | to insert ads, it's not about SEO. It's nothing to do with
         | Google.)
        
           | ROTMetro wrote:
           | Yes, and Amazon has improved the shopping experience as they
           | have gained these insights as well. As someone who went away
           | from the world for 5 years so wasn't in the pot as it slowly
           | started to boil, Google and Amazon are both significantly
           | worse and less user friendly than they used to be.
           | 
           | Just look at Google Assistant. It has gotten significantly
           | worse the last two years. Strangely, the only time it asks me
           | for feedback is when it happens to work. Shouldn't be hard
           | for it to detect when it craps out I talk frustrated at it,
           | but they don't seem interested in getting feedback at that
           | point. Ah, but it happens to turn one light on once (versus
           | the 20 something went wrong times), prompt for feedback on
           | that specific one time it worked.
        
           | owyn wrote:
           | > The idea that Search is somehow worsening doesn't make any
           | sense.
           | 
           | What analytics are you thinking of that would show search is
           | somehow MORE accurate? Because if it's just searches and
           | click throughs and traffic and revenue...
           | 
           | More people with internet = more people searching for stuff.
           | More mobile phones = more people searching for stuff out in
           | the world. Worse results = user goes back to google and does
           | ANOTHER search and search revenue just doubled again. Huzzah
           | bonuses and vacations to Disneyland all around this year!
           | 
           | I think by any measure, growth and clicks and revenue are
           | going to go up no matter what they do so I'm not sure exactly
           | what metric you'd be tracking to see whether Google search
           | results are actually qualitatively better? Short of the site
           | going down entirely, there's probably nothing they can do to
           | slow growth. But nowhere in that compounding money farm is
           | the quality of results relevant.
        
           | mrweasel wrote:
           | > The other thing I don't understand is the idea that Search
           | is somehow becoming less accurate over time.
           | 
           | The search is probably fine, but it's relegated to the bottom
           | half of the page. It could also get worse if Google isn't
           | able to keep up with the SEO and scammers. Personally I feel
           | like Google has lost interest in providing a good search
           | experience, they still have, what, 90% of the market. There's
           | zero incentive to ensure it's a good experience and they can
           | keep milking the advertisers.
           | 
           | Meanwhile the competitors have been forced to do better and
           | especially Bing has. Any search engine that rely on Bing has
           | become really good in the past five years. That might also be
           | part of it, those of us who went to Bing, DuckDuckGo or other
           | search engines for other reasons have learned to use those
           | and when we then go back to Google it's worse, because we
           | haven't used it for ten years.
           | 
           | But you're probably right, the search bit is fine, it finds
           | the same results as Bing, so it's down to presentation and
           | Google used to be the best and now they are the worst.
        
           | philistine wrote:
           | You're hiding huge swaths of unforeseen consequences.
           | 
           | Do you honestly think that when Google is presented with an
           | improvement in search results that would reduce its revenue
           | that they choose the improvement?
        
           | blindhippo wrote:
           | I'll echo this: search, in a purist sense, has definitely
           | improved (just looking back to the mid 90's through to now).
           | 
           | The "search experience" however, has degraded since the mid
           | 2010s, for me at least. I'm in a constant battle to filter
           | through advertising and bad content that is "optimized" for
           | the algorithm to find the information I need. The constant
           | need to monetize the technology more and more has certainly
           | reduced it's usefulness en-masse.
           | 
           | But I don't think chatbots or alternatives (beyond curated
           | indexes) will solve this problem - as you say the web itself
           | has morphed around ways to optimize one search engine's
           | ranking algorithm.
        
           | JohnFen wrote:
           | > that Search is doing better than ever, but some users just
           | don't like what the web offers in response.
           | 
           | The reason that I don't think it's this is because often
           | there are sites that offer _exactly_ what I 'm looking for.
           | Google doesn't surface them in my results, but other engines
           | do.
        
         | browningstreet wrote:
         | I was discussing this recently on a hike and I joked, "SEO
         | broke the Gen Z brain".
         | 
         | In my own personal experience, I think the younger generations
         | care less about search. They just don't use it much, nor do
         | they value the information & cultural pipeline in which search
         | is valuable.
        
         | JohnFen wrote:
         | > And now I ask myself: am I just too stupid to see it? Or are
         | the people too stupid to not see it?
         | 
         | My hypothesis is that it depends on how you search. For me,
         | Google has become unambiguously poor, and I've stopped using it
         | because I get bad results.
         | 
         | But I think that the reason for that is Google's use of AI (not
         | the LLM stuff, but the stuff they started using a number of
         | years ago). Google is clearly trying to interpret "what I
         | really mean" from my queries instead of just taking them at
         | face value, and it's awful at doing that. For me. It's
         | obviously good at it for other people. It may have to do with
         | me actively doing my best to prevent Google from tracking me.
        
         | pxx wrote:
         | I think people much prefer thinking they know something with a
         | superficial overview (see things like the popularity of TED
         | talks). Responses from LLMs are great for this: they look like
         | a cohesive summary but they often end up being total bullshit.
         | 
         | Digging through search results to find what you need is work.
         | Having something confident make you believe an alternate truth
         | is not.
         | 
         | People who actually try to use code output from chatbots
         | quickly realize it just only _looks_ like code of the right
         | shape and quality. There have been many blog posts and comments
         | here touting how great the code ChatGPT generated is while the
         | given example response is complete nonsense once you look a
         | little deeper.
        
         | fernandotakai wrote:
         | i.... 100% agree.
         | 
         | google still is king for every single type of search i do.
         | specially code related.
         | 
         | i've tried again and again to use "Chat-AIs" and they get so
         | much shit wrong while implying they are correct that i just
         | gave up.
        
         | adamweld wrote:
         | It's not that Google search has necessarily gotten worse, but
         | it's lagging behind the shitiffication of the web caused by SEO
         | and the new features (People Also Ask QA synopses) have
         | absolutely horrible accuracy.
         | 
         | ChatGPT and other LLMs are also absolutely horrible on
         | accuracy, don't get me wrong.
         | 
         | But, here's an example of what's wrong with Google.
         | 
         | I search something like "Can mangoes grow in Washington state?"
         | and at the top of my results is the condensed "People Also Ask"
         | question answer result. These attempt to read and condense a
         | webpage (of questionable accuracy) into an answer for my query,
         | but they are often full of shit.
         | 
         | For example expanding "Where are mangoes grown in WA" shows an
         | answer about Western Australia rather than Washington. Another
         | answer tells me "yes" but when I read the actual article it
         | clearly says "no, they won't survive".
        
           | felix318 wrote:
           | I find it interesting that people write Google queries in
           | correct, often polite English as if there is something
           | intelligent on the other side. When I try this query: "where
           | mango grow washington" I seem to get decent results, but the
           | human-sounding query does return garbage.
           | 
           | Perhaps the problem with Google is that it's trying too hard
           | to convince people that it's smarter than it really is. I
           | treat it as a stupid, mindless computer and it works fine
           | most of the time.
        
         | Macha wrote:
         | I've certainly found that google results for me are worse than
         | they used to be, and that DuckDuckGo is a lot more competitive
         | and the !g bang gets used less and provides less improvement to
         | results than it formerly did. I've been online since the time
         | when people were moving from Yahoo to Google, so I'm not a gen
         | Zer with different search patterns to Google's historical
         | audiences.
         | 
         | I'm not quite sure of the reason. There's a couple of
         | possibilities:
         | 
         | 1. DDG is relying on Bing for a lot of their search data, maybe
         | bing's just got better, or DDG have configured their
         | integration better. I don't feel that DDG's had a significant
         | improvement, it definitely feels like they've caught google on
         | the way down more so.
         | 
         | 2. Google losing the SEO war. As it gets easier to run and
         | monetise blogspam sites, more of them exist, and as time goes
         | on, a longer tail of topics get "served" by these sites. Unlike
         | the spam of years past which tried to convince Google that
         | their viagra selling site was really about top ten movie
         | downloads, these sites are nominally about the topic the user
         | searched for, so maybe Google is having a harder time trying to
         | evaluate "quality". LLMs are being given a lot of the blame for
         | this, but this is an older phenomenon than that, there were
         | plenty of sites doing e.g. templated articles fed product spec
         | sheet, or pay a minimum wage intern to rephrase the wikipedia
         | page before that.
         | 
         | 3. I've cut down my usage of Google services to basically just
         | YouTube and YouTube Music. I also run ublock origin pretty much
         | universally. Maybe my de-Googling has just been successful to
         | the point that Google doesn't have a accurate profile for me
         | anymore, and this has more of an impact on search than I
         | expected.
        
       | politelemon wrote:
       | I've read through the post and this reads more of a memory lane
       | of Google, rather than getting into the statement "Now, for the
       | first time, its cultural relevance is in question."
       | 
       | There are a few links scattered about on relatively minor topics
       | , but nothing substantial showing that it's in question. Either
       | that's clickbait, which I'm now starting to associate with the
       | verge, or it's far too early days to tell.
       | 
       | Like other comments here my impression is not the same as the
       | post. And the slivers of reasoning given are weak at best.
        
       | AdamH12113 wrote:
       | I never know how to interpret statements like this:
       | 
       | > More recently, there's been a shift to entertainment-based
       | video feeds like TikTok -- which is now being used as a primary
       | search engine by a new generation of internet users.
       | 
       | What does it mean to use an entertainment-based video site as a
       | "primary search engine"?
        
         | canadianwriter wrote:
         | People will search on Tiktok for things like "how to get game
         | working on linux" or "how to fix a computer" or whatever. They
         | wont bother with Google and go straight to tiktok.
        
           | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
           | Right, a sort of generational divide. Old people (like me)
           | looking for how-to information go to youtube; young(er)
           | people go to tiktok. Tiktok is 100% blocked from my system
           | but from what i've seen leak into twitter, it's hard for me
           | (an old person) to imagine how it could compete with youtube
           | for how-to. But then maybe that's just growing old.
        
             | JohnFen wrote:
             | > Old people (like me) looking for how-to information go to
             | youtube
             | 
             | I'm old, but I would never search YouTube for how-to
             | information. Videos are too light on solid information and
             | are too hard to use as references.
             | 
             | Tiktok is worse, though, having even less information.
        
               | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
               | I have found youtube videos that are simply superb for
               | tasks as diverse as:                  * replacing the
               | steering rods on my Sprinter van        * restoring
               | factory state on an ancient Garmin watch        * mixing
               | adobe plaster        * tying a prince of wales knot in a
               | necktie
               | 
               | and lots, lots more.
        
               | JohnFen wrote:
               | Different people are different, of course. Video doesn't
               | work well for me if I'm trying to learn something new. I
               | was only pushing back on the notion that there's an age
               | connection to this.
        
           | standardUser wrote:
           | Reminds me of how often I add "reddit" to the end of Google
           | searches because I know the base results will be useless for
           | a whole range of topics without it. This is doubly true for
           | any even slightly risque or illegal topics.
        
         | smhinsey wrote:
         | It's something that is more alien the longer ago it was that
         | you got involved with the internet, but I've recently seen this
         | firsthand myself and it works. It's not a general purpose
         | search but if you put in terms related to an upcoming vacation,
         | for example, you will find an endless stream of people's videos
         | of any aspect of it. If your hotel has a suite you're
         | considering, search the name and watch videos to see if it
         | looks worth it, etc. It's basically a way of bypassing highly
         | staged and curated ad photos or videos to see what real people
         | recorded.
         | 
         | It seems more like a side effect of how everyone is trying to
         | become an influencer than a new permanent state of being, but
         | for the time being it can be interesting
        
         | bayofpigs wrote:
         | [dead]
        
         | dilyevsky wrote:
         | Probably means people use it for "how do i X", "Y review" and
         | other types of queries more which certainly rings true just bc
         | of how google results for these are usually about 100% spam
        
           | AdamH12113 wrote:
           | I suppose that makes sense. Video is low-density and hard to
           | search compared to text, so it never occurs to me to seek out
           | video as a first option, but given the amount of SEO spam I
           | can see how someone would come to the opposite conclusion.
        
         | brk wrote:
         | It means that users feel there is enough diversity of relevant
         | content that they will find a result that gives them either the
         | information, or the entertainment, they are seeking.
         | 
         | Some people (probably in particular older people) see the
         | internet as the sum of everything (eg: Reddit + Facebook +
         | TikTok + etc). Other people, I think, have less of a concept of
         | the internet as a mass data collective and see it as more
         | silo'd. And within those silos they feel that certain ones will
         | have results/content that is more inline with their viewpoints,
         | desired results, etc. So the result is we see some of these
         | social media sites like Tiktok becoming very much a micro-
         | internet to these users, and they specifically DON'T want
         | google-style results that reflect the internet at large (and
         | they don't want to use search modifiers to say only search
         | tiktok.com).
         | 
         | In some ways we may be trending back towards the days of
         | AOL/Prodigy/Compuserve/The Well, where you virtually hang out
         | with "your people", and content that doesn't exist within your
         | group basically doesn't exist at all.
        
         | anthonypasq wrote:
         | youve never used youtube as a search engine?
        
         | johnnyanmac wrote:
         | I kind of get it. It's very much "I need to make a word limit"
         | jargon, but they are basically talking about how social media
         | has become a primary news source for many of the youth. This
         | generation doesn't read Reuters/AP or watch any mainstream news
         | network, they get updates from their facebook wall or they see
         | the news on Reddit. If they are curious about some news piece
         | they will search within the website about posts made, not a
         | general google taking you to professional media.
         | 
         | I didn't know Tiktok could do this, but I guess life finds a
         | way.
        
       | stephc_int13 wrote:
       | When this happen, there is always a lot of inertia at first, it
       | can take years or maybe even decades, but almost every time the
       | denial leads to a pernicious internal erosion and a sudden
       | collapse at the end.
        
       | chickenpotpie wrote:
       | Did the verge seriously cite a single hackernews comment as a
       | source?
       | 
       | "There is a growing chorus of complaints that Google is not as
       | accurate, as competent, as dedicated to search as it once was"
       | 
       | The word "growing" is a link to hackernews
        
         | kipchak wrote:
         | I saw a funny song on YouTube about it, if that counts.
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrFv1O4dbqY
        
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