
How much longer will we trust Google’s search results? - ecliptik
https://www.theverge.com/tech/2020/1/24/21079696/google-serp-design-change-altavisa-ads-trust
======
jborichevskiy
> Recode’s Peter Kafka recently interviewed Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti, and
> Peretti said something really insightful: what if Google’s ads really aren’t
> that good? What if Google is just taking credit for clicks on ads just
> because people would have been searching for that stuff anyway? I’ve been
> thinking about it all day: what if Google ads actually aren’t that effective
> and the only reason they make so much is billions of people use Google?

Key paragraph of the article. You don't _have to be good_ at ads when you have
a firehose of most of the world's population coming directly to you, telling
you exactly what they want to buy/find/learn/read/do in their native language
combined with their geolocation and search history. It would be hard not to
serve up relevant ads in that case.

~~~
blackearl
Same as any other monopolistic company. Comcast isn't necessarily good at
providing internet, in fact most of their customers would say they're shit at
it. But most people don't have a choice.

~~~
skrowl
Most people can choose only phone company or cable company for internet (some
people only get 1 or the other).

There are LOTS of search engines to choose from that are freely available.
DuckDuckGo is pretty great these days.

Microsoft is even is making a search engine now, I've heard! /s

~~~
iamaelephant
In this analogy the "cable customer" would be the ad purchaser. I don't know
enough about that industry to know if the analogy works, but just saying.

------
BitwiseFool
I've actually moved to other search engines because the quality of the results
have gone down dramatically. It seems like google will fixate on one or two
keywords in my search (usually the most generic ones) and ignore the rest. In
addition, the old google tricks like using quotes for literal values no longer
seems to work. It is like google is guessing what I want, rather than trying
to find what I have entered as a query.

I don't know if this is because SEO has poisoned their index, or if I'm not
googling "correctly" anymore.

~~~
javiercr
To get the old behaviour for literal search using quotes enable the "Verbatim
mode" (Tools > All results > Verbatim)

It's a must if you're a developer searching for some obscure error message,
yet still most people don't know about it.

~~~
JohnFen
> To get the old behaviour for literal search using quotes enable the
> "Verbatim mode" (Tools > All results > Verbatim)

That hasn't worked for me for a long time.

------
JohnFen
I don't trust Google's search results right now. Not because they've blurred
the line between ads and results (although that certainly makes the situation
much worse), but because I don't tend to get very good results from Google
search.

~~~
topkai22
Who do you use? I use Bing and like it, but I also used to work there.

~~~
atwebb
Not sure about everyone else but google is a proxy for other sites now where I
can get relevant answers. So I have 2 clicks to the eventual site instead of
1. Similar to using site:www.reddit.com or something similar. I realize that's
still using Google as a search engine but it is different than how I
previously used it.

Thinking briefly on it, the main thing I leverage Google for is phonebook like
information or getting a quick definition/spellcheck.

~~~
Loughla
>Thinking briefly on it, the main thing I leverage Google for is phonebook
like information or getting a quick definition/spellcheck.

That is exactly right! I use it as a reference material, calculator, or map.
There is no other use for google search due to optimization nonsense.

For anything in-depth, I use technical resources and databases available
through my local public library.

~~~
throwaway9381
> For anything in-depth, I use technical resources and databases available
> through my local public library.

Can you speak more about this? Very curious about this as I would like to try
myself.

~~~
Loughla
I'm not sure what else to put. When I need to know more about something, I go
to the library's database site, select the appropriate database, and search
for what I need to know about.

This is in-depth knowledge, as it requires reading and synthesizing journal
articles, and understanding themes. This obviously doesn't work for quick
questions like what is the square root of 6, but for more higher ordered
concepts in my specific field, it's highly valuable.

Does that answer your question?

------
ignoramous
I don't, anymore. Just as I now don't trust and download a gazillion apps on
my phone anymore.

I've personally switched to
[https://duckduckgo.com/lite](https://duckduckgo.com/lite) (wished it was
available in dark-mode, may be I should write a greasemonkey script) and make
it a point to change search engine defaults on all phones in the household and
remove or disable google-search and chrome apps.

For most basic searches, ddg/lite works just as good and is lighting fast. I
do find myself _!g_ redirecting searches to Google which admittedly does a
remarkably better job at answering certain class of queries. I used to search
on startpage.com, before it sold to an ad-company, which proxies Google search
results minus the tracking and ads.

Speaking of proxy search engines, there're various searx mirrors too, but I
haven't yet used them.

~~~
nreece
Too bad their lite mode doesn't support region setting.

------
ineedasername
I think a better question that isn't asked is the following: _Has Google
created a market for ads where non would exist if they simply provided only
organic results?_

By this I mean that it's possible the main reason Google Ads are useful for
companies is because Google has reinforced a sort of negative Nash equilibrium
by allowing competitors to squat on organic results by purchasing ads against
those better results. I.e. So the best organic results lose user share &
clicks because Google lets competitors set ads against them. Given this
situation, those targeted by their competitors have no choice but to try &
outbid their rivals. Meaning Google Ads are only useful to companies because
they exist at all, and assuming minimal gaming of the organic results system
with SEO, both companies and users would be better off if there were no ads
and the best most relevant results won out on their own merit.

~~~
oehpr
If you put the question to people "Would you have an easier time finding good
products and services if there were no advertisements?" I think the majority
of people would answer "no".

It's sad state of affairs we're in if we can't even imagine finding out about
something without that knowledge being forced down our throats.

~~~
feanaro
I haven't seen an internet ad in years due to using uBlock Origin with very
strict block lists. I feel like I find products and services I need
effortlessly. Am I missing something?

~~~
oehpr
Yes. We are discussing googles advertising, and the strategic decisions it
forces on companies operating within googles context. And in my post more
generally, how that same game plays out in wider society, and with the general
public

We are not discussing your personal advertising experience. Nor even the
general technocratic audience of HN's advertising experience.

~~~
feanaro
I'm aware the overall discussion was not about my personal preferences, so it
should hopefully be clear this is not what I was asking.

The context (set by the OP of this branch) is also that perhaps there is a
case of perverse incentives going on, one where we have reached an unhealthy,
but relatively stable equilibrium of the majority having the impression of
needing Google ads where there would be no such need if they didn't exist.

You responded by saying the majority would indeed confirm that they would not
want to be left without ads (an unsubstantiated but plausible claim). But
there are clearly people who choose to opt out of ads completely, myself
included, and I don't see myself as missing out on anything. So I'm asking
whether I am missing out on something.

------
ogre_codes
I have to disagree fundamentally with the author on this point:

> but then Google was always ugly until relatively recently

Google was originally and for many years extremely elegant in it’s simplicity.
There is nothing ugly about getting people exactly what they need instantly.

As for the main thrust of the article, I’ve already found Google’s results
mostly untrustworthy. For some time search results have been so dominated by
adverts that frequently the results I was looking for are buried under the
fold. Search is a simple task and for 99% of searches there are at least 2
competitors who serve 90% fewer adverts per page. For the other 1% of searches
I’m 3 keystrokes away from getting Google’s search laden results as a second
opinion.

~~~
monadic2
> Google was originally and for many years extremely elegant in it’s
> simplicity.

What, no ads?

~~~
caymanjim
Google has always and still does have the least-obtrusive ads. I don't like
when ads masquerade as content, but if I have to receive ads, I'd prefer
Google-managed ads over anyone else's. Even Stack Overflow fills their pages
with hideous animated ads, and they're about the second-least-objectionable
ad-bearing site.

~~~
ogre_codes
> Google has always and still does have the least-obtrusive ads.

This is no longer true. DuckDuckGo definitely has less obtrusive advertising
now versus Google. There are fewer adverts per search and adverts are better
labeled. Ads have gotten so pervasive, on a typical Google search, organic
results are frequently below the fold.

------
thrwaway69
Here is a list of alternatives:

Ecosia: [https://www.ecosia.org](https://www.ecosia.org)

Duckduckgo: [https://duck.com](https://duck.com)

Yandex: [https://yandex.com](https://yandex.com)

Cliqz: [https://beta.cliqz.com](https://beta.cliqz.com)

Qwant: [https://www.qwant.com](https://www.qwant.com)

Startpage: [https://www.startpage.com](https://www.startpage.com)

Searx: [https://github.com/asciimoo/searx](https://github.com/asciimoo/searx)

Bing: [https://bing.com](https://bing.com)

Resources to build your own:

[https://github.com/topics/search-engine](https://github.com/topics/search-
engine)

[https://openwebindex.eu](https://openwebindex.eu)

[https://commoncrawl.org](https://commoncrawl.org)

~~~
Retr0spectrum
I regularly use yandex for reverse image search, it does much better than
google and bing.

~~~
mindfulhack
You're right. Wow. Just tried it. (yandex.com/images) This thread is really
opening up the truth which is that Google is no longer the be all and end all
of search.

This is a great feeling. Thanks for the Yandex tip.

------
thirdtry
I miss the days when I could search with AND, OR, +word and -word. Now if I
search google with more than one word it no longer searches the internet.
Instead it searches for ads that are somewhat similar to my query and features
those. Any useful links on the first page are accidental.

~~~
nerdkid93
The -word syntax still tends to work for me on subsequent searches (when I
searched for a similar query but without the -word).

------
bplot
I'm surprised nobody has been talking about the fact that muddying the
distinction between ads and organic results is illegal. Google, Amazon, and
others have been moving this way for a while, despite the FTC sending a
warning a few years ago: [https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/business-
blog/2013/06/...](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/business-
blog/2013/06/ftc-staff-search-engines-differentiate-ads-natural-results)

~~~
suifbwish
This is literally what the Facebook post feed is made of.

------
_emacsomancer_
As far as I can tell, there are four major search providers: Google, Bing,
Baidu, & Yandex. Qwant seems to do some amount of their own indexing, falling
back to Bing for other things ( [https://betterweb.qwant.com/web-indexation-
where-does-qwants...](https://betterweb.qwant.com/web-indexation-where-does-
qwants-independence-stand/) ). Most of the 'alternative' search engines (DDG
&c.) seem to rely on Bing and a few (like StartPage) on Google, and I continue
to find regular Bing-based search results worse than Google-based search
results. Searx is interesting (and what I largely use), and can aggregate from
various providers, but it's hard to find reliable working Searx instances.

~~~
crocodiletears
Search engines like Google and Bing are like a new pair of shoes, imho. You've
got to give them a week or rwo of use before they really fit your use case. I
used to use Searx, and DDG, and kept having to fall back on Google regularly.

I went to Bing, and had a similar issue. But after its personalization kicked
in, I haven't had to go back to Google more than once or twice a month, and in
general, I'm happier with my results when I compare the two.

YMMV, though. I trust Google less than I trust Microsoft for search, because
the company and its employees seem to lack a "save the world" pathology which
I keep getting hints of whenever someone pulls back the curtain on the
company's culture. I can intuitively understand a corporate Megalith like MS's
interest a lot more easily, so I'm more comfortable deciding whether or not
I'm getting a good response from Bing.

But as a daily driver, unless you're really concerned about Google, I don't
think there's any material advantage to making the switch.

------
ineedasername
I think it's not impossible to dethrone Google from its dominant Search
position if it continues a trend of serving up less relevant paid results,
provided a competitor is able to step up.

It's what happened with Google initially. I remember the late 90's search
engine landscape. Result were hit or miss, but one of a few search engines
would usually give what you needed, so you had to try a few: Yahoo, Alta
Vista, MSN, Hotbox... there were even sites the aggregated a few engines to
provide results from multiple: I don't remember the name, but there was one
such that had 4 quadrants, each one a different engine and you'd get results
from all 4. It was my default for a while.

Then Google came along, and I'm not sure it always provided better results
than all of the other engines, but it consistently provided results that were
good enough that you didn't need hop around much anymore. And as we all know,
virtually in the blink of an eye they dominated the market.

This is why I think they can be dethroned if they go too far down a path of
weakening their results. Just a bit too far, and a competitor with a little
momentum and word of mouth network effects could really gain a toe hold. It's
a long shot, but over time.... there was once a time IBM seemed unbeatable. It
took years of chipping away from multiple competitors, but they had a big
fall.

~~~
claudiulodro
> I don't remember the name, but there was one such that had 4 quadrants, each
> one a different engine and you'd get results from all 4. It was my default
> for a while.

Dogpile? Looks like they are still around, but a quick test shows it to be
even more full of ads than Google nowadays.

------
grecy
Does anyone here even really _use_ Google's search engine anymore?

I do search for stuff a lot, but to be honest I know perfectly when it will be
a stackoverflow page I want, or a wikipedia page, or it will have that link to
maps.

I can't remember the last time I searched for something and I didn't already
know what domain I actually wanted to end up on.

~~~
treebornfrog
You need to keep in mind that HN is a bubble. The responses here do not
represent the masses.

Yes, most people will search for 'insurance quotes' and click an ad.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Yes? Why are you asking us to keep that in mind?

------
geddy
They've been terrible for years. I yearn for the days when you'd look up "x
video game review" and you'd get actual human beings with personal sites
showing up, and opinions from random people. Now that SEO has been beaten into
a pulp, the first 8,000 pages are either major corporations or spam.

So the modern internet in general, I suppose. Corporations in spam. Never
mind, it'd be unreasonable of me to expect anything else.

~~~
black_yarn
Wish I could up this a thousand times. I've had a personal site for some
twenty years; nothing fancy, but I put a lot of effort into my content, and I
used to get hundreds of unique visitors a day.

Over the last ten years, my non-bot traffic has dropped to a tenth of that,
and at the same time, my ability to find similar websites has disappeared. Now
I see nothing but resume-padding blogs with generic WordPress templates, and
pages of empty corporate bullshit.

------
gre
I've been prefixing all my searches with reddit and then filtering by within
last month or last year, and something seems to have changed lately. The
reddit results say some number of days within the time constraint, but then
the result is actually years old which makes it all pointless. This is
literally the only way I search google right now because their results are so
spammy otherwise.

~~~
MiroF
This is exactly the same for me. I only search reddit through google (and ddg
otherwise), but it no longer is providing me with recent results even when I
filter.

------
caymanjim
I've seen various stories about this for a week, and I kept wondering when
they were going to roll the change out so that I could see. It turns out that
I just don't see any of the ads/sponsored links at all normally, presumably
because uBlock is hiding them. I guess I'm surprised that enough HN users
would even notice this.

~~~
gtirloni
The search results were changed to add a favicon and hide the URL. Adblockers
wouldn't help with that.

~~~
caymanjim
Of course they can. Ad blockers like uBlock remove DOM elements.

------
wcchandler
I’m a sysadmin/engineer. Google results have gotten so bad in the past year
I’m debating about taking some training courses from our vendors just so I’m
not so reliant on a search engine. I feel like this is dark times for my
profession.

------
cletus
I would love to be a fly on the wall for the decisions that led to Google
making the distinction between ads and search results more ambiguous with the
latest redesign because whoever signed off on this needs to be fired, for
Google's sake.

Google SERPs are the one form of advertising I don't mind and are most
effective because:

1\. Unlike pretty much every other form of online advertising, you have the
benefit of user intent in that they actually want to find something and an
advertised result may be what they're looking for. Most other forms of online
advertising are deliberately intrusive because attention = $$$; and

2\. Google ads are paid for on a CPC basis rather than CPM basis so Google is
incentivized to show you something relevant to you and your search rather than
just churning impressions (like those pages that split an article into a
gallery of 11 pages; ad impressions is why they do this).

But a key part of this is user trust that Google clearly differentiated an ad
from an organic search result. I wonder what short term metrics and thinking
went into this. I'm sure there was a short term topline revenue gain but it's
one of those things that you're not actually increasingly value, you're just
cashing in your brand's value for cash now.

But hey I'm sure a bunch of people got promoted, so it's fine.

------
luxuryballs
I trust them for dev stuff, error codes, obscure technical whatever, but not
for news or political content, and I’m wary about certain scientific/medical
topics.

------
lustigmacher
I don't think it's practical. None of the search engines give me results of
quality high enough for my daily software development problem, but Google.
Tried them all. If you want to get stuff done, you google it. If you want to
play socially responsible society member role, you try alternative browsers,
until you run out of time, then you google it.

~~~
pmlnr
I don't know what you're searching, but I found the opposite to be true.
Exceptions being local to geo area shopping, searching for images with text on
them with the text - think xkcd -, and extremely obscure software error
messages - apart from these, DDG beats google for me. Has been for quite a
while.

------
valdiorn
I switched to bing on my work machine at the start of this week, and have
found I've been getting better results than google gives me. Especially if I'm
trying to do any type of complex query, like filtering by domain or multiple
search phrases, google dumbed down their query handing some years ago so it's
basically useless now.

I've started treating google more like the Yellow Pages; a good source when
you WANT ads, i.e. you're looking for a tradesman in your area, or a
restaurant to go to. For organic search, it's rubbish.

Edit: the dumbed down search has begun on youtube as well, YT routinely
ignores what I searched for and just shows me videos related to what I was
watching previously. I search for guitar amps and get videos for DIY kitchens,
because I was looking at that stuff last night. Beyond moronic.

------
bonzer
We’ve gotten to a place where Ads have become the backbone of the Web. Google
says it’s mission is to make the worlds content organized and useable. That
isn’t quite true. It’s to monetize the organization of that content.

They claim ads “keep the internet free”. “Free” from paying sure, but free
from questionable untruthful ads, con artists Ads, and Horrible content that
is monetized by ads that shouldn’t be?

Google will say those are “hard computer science” problems they are tackling.
The reality is they tackle the problem as long as it doesn’t impact revenue
and put just enough resources on it to make it look like they care. Or
retroactively share data and say they are ahead of the problem (like YouTube
CEO on 60 minutes).

How a trillion dollar company of the Self proclaimed worlds Smartest people
don’t know a pedophile ring is using YouTube kids comments Section is
reckless. Why google even needs to monetize Kids content is pure greed. Do
kids really want to see an Ad or benefit from it? Maybe to burn into their
habits that “Ads are just part of life”

Life With Google in charge of the worlds Information.

------
smsm42
In what meaning we could ever "trust" Google's search results? We have already
witnesses myriad of examples of Google removing and modifying search results
to mollify various governments and private groups. We witnessed how Google
banned substring "gun"
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16479204](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16479204))
from Google Shopping results. We have seen people in Google discussing "ML
fairness" (modifying algorithms to fit their perceptions of what results
should be instead of showing what they actually are) and more broadly, their
responsibility to shape political discussion and national election results. We
now know they have the tools, the means and the motivation to influence search
results, and that they have done it many times in the past. Commercial
considerations add to this mess, but I think if the "trust" is the idea that
Google just shows the search results as they are, without any outside
considerations not related to the quality of search intervening, then this
"trust" is long gone. Now the question is only who gets the power to play with
it. Is it worse if Google sells a bit of this power instead of keeping it all
to themselves? I don't know, maybe, but by then I don't think talking about
any "trust" has any point.

------
fjabre
Just came here to say that Google's new ad layout is deliberately misleading
and Google's search results are starting to look like spam all over.

Who in the hell is in charge of search at Google right now? What a god awful
job. The engineer in charge should be fired for such an abomination.

------
corobo
Minus two years if I’m remembering correctly.

Only time I hit up Google is if DDG has trouble understanding what I’m after

------
moreoutput
I've already moved on. Same expected junk at the top nowadays.

------
StanislavPetrov
Advertising aside, Google's search problems also extend to their political
and/or economic agenda (outside of paid advertisements). I do a lot of
writing, and often look up articles I have read in the past, sometimes the
distant past, in order to reference them in the footnotes of my articles and
posts. Many articles on politically controversial subjects (especially those
that reflect poorly on "establishment" positions) either don't come up at all
or are extremely hard to find, despite putting in numerous, specific keywords.
Doubtless this is (at least in part) a function of Google's curated
"reliability algorithm" that deranks (and in some cases hides completely)
sites and sources that Google deems less credible than mainstream,
establishment sources (a black-box decision making process that often ranks
credible sites below larger, "corporate" outlets with a much worse track
record of accuracy). While one could argue that this sort of algorithmic
sorting has some use in its news section, when it comes to search this is a
terrible policy. A search engine that hides or obfuscates the specific
information or article I'm looking for because it doesn't match their agenda
is worthless as a search tool.

------
ketzo
Realized I was reading this alongside another link on the HN front page right
now, [We Wasted $50k On Google Ads So You Don't Have
To]([https://www.indiehackers.com/article/we-wasted-50k-on-
google...](https://www.indiehackers.com/article/we-wasted-50k-on-google-ads-
so-you-dont-have-to-355a425b27))... the comparison was a little funny and a
little.. scary?

------
sparaker
1\. Google search ads look like search results. While they used to not allow
website owners to make their content look like their text ads. 2\. Uber shows
the rate (and eventually charges) for the maximum possible route from any two
locations, when the actual route is generally smaller than that. 3\. Amazon
charges Import Fee Deposit based on a calculation and when less than that is
actually charged, they don't refund it, unless someone actually asks them to.

It seems that world has fallen prey to the mindset, "Screw customer
experience, let's extort the maximum amount of money we can."

Technology companies are no longer in the business of making things easier,
instead they are in the business of making the most amount of money they can,
while not loosing their business entirely. If these companies actually valued
the consumer/customer in the past, they've certainly moved beyond that point.

------
tylerl
"You should not trust them because they show ads that are easily mistaken for
legitimate content!"

... Declared the news site, in a paragraph sandwiched between two ads
carefully disguised to look like legitimate content...

You can debate about whether you believe the message, but there's no
reasonable argument that you should believe the messenger.

WTF, journalism. Seriously.

------
puranjay
I've switched to DDG. I'll take slightly inferior results if it means a more
open web.

Google's results are now nearly all ads above the fold. The ads are also
deceptively marked.

Really scummy tactic. The sort of thing you'd expect from crappy credit card
companies.

If this is the direction Google is going to take under Pichai, then I'm out.

------
gojomo
How much longer will _I_ , personally, fully trust Google’s search results?

Until about negative-ten years from now.

------
ineedasername
_> What if Google is just taking credit for clicks on ads just because people
would have been searching for that stuff anyway?_

I don't _think_ that's the case. I mean, in some case yes there are companies
buying ads when they would have been among the top search results anyway. But
assuming that many ad creators are _probably_ savvy enough to know where they
rate in organic search results, they're likely not targeting adwords where
they'd be high in those organic results.

I.e., competent users of google advertising are, by definition, users that
avoid paying for results they would have gotten otherwise.

------
rackforms
Consider the following from personal experience: If you rank highly on Google
search as I once did you may become the target of malicious actors trying to
leach from your ranking.

In my case this leaching appeared to Google as if /we/ were trying to game the
system with link farms (we were not). Google penalized us in 2011 and we've
yet to recover.

The point: when you use Google search you're often served sub-standard
results, as over time generations of ranking penalties has lead to lower
quality sites ranking higher.

------
dang
There's also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22141125](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22141125)
("Google is Backtracking on its Controversial Desktop Search Results
Redesign").

We don't need two. Which is better? Edit: we've got
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22144210](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22144210)
now.

------
moultano
> _Last week we updated the look of Search on desktop to mirror what’s been on
> mobile for months. We’ve heard your feedback about the update. We always
> want to make Search better, so we’re going to experiment with new placements
> for favicons…._

[https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1220768238490939394](https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1220768238490939394)

------
kvark
Why even show ads? Perhaps, it would be easier to just have Alphabet spawning
a company doing SEO that triggers the right strings of the Google page ranking
algorithm, thus successfully putting stuff on top of search. Google still
receives money, but no specific "this is an Ad" needed. At least, in that
universe that would be no question on whether we can trust in "no-Ad" section
of the results.

------
Animats
I switched to Bing last summer because Google was mostly showing me useless
ads. Bing is years behind Google, but that's a good thing.

------
munk-a
Given how little I trust Ads (and I think others are in the same boat) I'm a
bit surprised Google hasn't started interspersing Ads more at this point -
having your Ad as the second result below an organic search result would
probably give you more clicks... that first search result slot is slowly
becoming a dead zone.

------
iamleppert
I think the logical next step is for Google to start showing old-school banner
ads at the top of the page and pop-ups, and pop-under's. Once that happens
(and I am thinking it will be relatively soon), their transformation and
subsequent and inevitable slow decline will be fully complete.

------
lnenad
Google has removed favicons from search in an attempt to de-adsify their
results. I don't think it's gonna work, I think with the latest change they've
brought to light stuff most of the people using Google didn't even think
about.

------
ineedasername
Peripheral question to the article: are there any vendor-independent tools
that attempt to objectively measure result relevance among various search
engines? Or even user-rated studies where the user tried multiple engines and
rated their results?

------
bordercases
You can remove some bias by using startpage.com but it won't eliminate SEO.

Maybe Yandex?

~~~
geogra4
I wish baidu had an english version. But yeah, bing, yandex, ddg.

------
bronlund
The more intelligent they try to make it, the more stupider it gets.

~~~
anoncake
Their attempts to make their search more intelligent ends up keeping the user
from using theirs. Which is practically always a bad thing: Regular users tend
to suck at searching (e.g. formulating queries) because they haven't learned
it, not because they wouldn't be smart enough or because it's something you
need a special talent for.

------
jhoechtl
I still do trust Google --- because I knowingly feed the search engine with
terms I really hope no one can monetize. That's the only way I do not feel
betrayed.

------
Tagbert
their quality has definitely gone down and they are really pushing their own
results for domains like travel. They seem to have mixed goals there or maybe
not.

------
zentiggr
I'd like to frame this question as "What percentage of people have left Google
for other better SEs?" I'm curious to see that number climb.

------
delusionalwrit
I'm ready for a pay per search tool that's as useful as google with the
privacy focus of duck duck go. A penny a search - I'm game.

~~~
gtirloni
I'd certainly pay a fixed price per month for unlimited searches. I think
Google knows that won't work so they don't offer it. Or they couldn't ask the
same price that they get selling your personal data?

They do offer Youtube Premium without ads but the search engine space is
really different. Microtransactions are not here yet.

~~~
mthoms
If they offered a premium "no ads" search option it would draw too much
attention from the media/public to just how bad the situation currently is.

So, even if they could _increase_ revenue per power user (RPPU?) it would do
irreparable harm to their ad-supported model (for non-power users) in the long
term.

------
Phait
I don't understand why we get daily articles about Google ads on HN's front
page. Install an adblocker, problem solved.

~~~
anoncake
For us, yes. Not for the average user that we, being the experts here, have a
certain responsibility for.

Besides adblocking is a bit of a cludge.

------
neiman
I find it quite ironic that search engines were working better for me 10 years
ago than they do now.

------
joshdance
I am trying DuckDuckGo for a week.

------
stebann
The beginning of the great fall...

------
xenologist
The question of trusting Google's search results go far beyond it obfuscating
ads in the results pages. Google's executives exert absolute granular control
over what results end up at the top. Research shows that users are most likely
to click only the top few results, meaning the this control has a massive
influence on public awareness.

What's more, Google has been shown to be ideologically driven when ranking its
results. Including, for instance, down-ranking news sites with left-leaning or
socialist views such as the World Socialist Website, Common Dreams, Democracy
Now and others as part of a concerted scheme with other information
controllers like Facebook to marginalize ideological viewpoints counter to
their preferences.

One can only speculate how much "meta-googling" (googling google to find out
what it's up to) is rigged and cherrypicked.

------
TillE
Because unfortunately I still find Google indispensable (it's fast and gives
me better results than the alternatives), I'm now using the "Better Google"
userscript which reverts to the old look. Saves me a lot of pain and
suffering.

[https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/395257-better-
google](https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/395257-better-google)

------
jiveturkey
I'm done with Google as of today. The evil genius of making links look like
ads, is not just the straw that broke the camel's back; it's the entire bale.

There is mass hysteria about Google in general. They aren't the privacy
nightmare the pitchfork wielding folks would have you believe. That said, they
_inspire_ others that are indeed nightmares. The entire third party tracking
industry is a nightmare. And it was already, before Google. (Google _bought_
doubleclick, don't forget.) But people see Google doing it and want to get in
on it, nevermind the internal controls and oversight. So the net net is that
it's a bad thing -- nobody can be trusted to hold so much PII.

I'm switching to Bing. DDG never did it for me. As an aggregator of other
engine's work, I do not enjoy their business model either.

~~~
JohnFen
> They aren't the privacy nightmare the pitchfork wielding folks would have
> you believe.

Wait, so they aren't collecting as much information about me and my use of my
machines as they can anymore? When did that change?

~~~
jiveturkey
No they aren't and never did. They don't, for example, install a supercookie
(like AT&T has done) so that they can track you the person vs "you" some
uniquely identified user. Where are the pitchforks for AT&T?

To the extent they do collect as much data as they can, they limit it to
identify you as a unique user, not you as a specific person. In the cases they
necessarily identify you the person (e.g. Google Pay where they know who you
are), they firewall that data and do not make the connection to you, some
anonymous but unique user. They do an excellent job of not pulling a FB and
selling the raw data. Their internal controls are extreme. They "quickly"
aggregate and anonymize the data so that they can sell their customers (ad
buyers) demographics, not individual people.

They could collect much more information than they do.

~~~
JohnFen
> No they aren't and never did.

That you can say this make me think that we are using different definitions.

Have they also stopped buying real-world credit card usage and correlating it
with your other actions?

> To the extent they do collect as much data as they can, they limit it to
> identify you as a unique user, not you as a specific person.

That doesn't really make it much better, in my opinion.

> They do an excellent job of not pulling a FB and selling the raw data. Their
> internal controls are extreme.

I never thought they did sell raw data. Having strong internal controls is
wonderful, but a bit beside the point in my criticism. I object to the
collection. How the data is handled post-collection is a separate issue.

~~~
jiveturkey
> Have they also stopped buying real-world credit card usage and correlating
> it with your other actions?

Thank you. This is a really great example of pitchfork-ism. People want to see
things that aren't there. Their desire to see those things blinds them to what
is actually happening.

Google doesn't and never did what you are implying. Yes, they correlate those
2 sets of information. But neither side of the transaction (CC, Google) knows
or _can know_ the identifying linkage in the other direction. It allows the
vendor (advertiser) to get conversion rate of online ads to real world
purchases, without revealing who purchased them to any of the 3 parties. It
isn't that Google or the CC issuer has to anonymise the data after they
correlate the linkage, so as to hide the linkage from the advertiser; no party
has the other piece of data in the first place, thanks to homomorphic
encryption. It's actually a wonderful application of technology, being decried
for completely wrong reasons. We need _more_ of this specific technology, not
less. (to the extent we need this at all)

> I object to the collection.

As do I, and I stated as much. My anti-complaint is that there is a huge
backlash against Google when Google aren't the bad guys. There is a whole
industry of actual bad actors -- doing "bad" things with the data they
collect. vs Google that treats the data as sacrosanct, and they use it to
actually provide a service to you. The other folks are simply stealing your
data and reselling it for their own ends, without providing anything useful to
you.

Look, I'm not saying Google is great, or even good. As I said here and
elsewhere, they are evil. But evil people (entities) can do good things. We
(collectively) have all agreed to Google's business model. And Google is
acting as a responsible steward for the information they collect. There are
much, much worse actors out there that are far more deserving of the spite
that is sent in Google's direction. (only re: privacy specifically ... again,
they are generally evil and deserve to die the death that will come to them
and none too soon)

~~~
JohnFen
> Google is acting as a responsible steward for the information they collect.

OK, but that's beside the point. The point is that they collect information
about me without my consent.

> There are much, much worse actors out there that are far more deserving of
> the spite that is sent in Google's direction.

Let's say this is true. That in no way means that we shouldn't complain about
Google as well. I direct my ire at all companies that I consider abusive. That
some of those may be more abusive than others isn't a free pass to the less
abusive ones.

~~~
jiveturkey
It's true, google is dominant and we should complain about them. But for _what
they do_ , not for what they don't do. That's where the pitchforks come out.

