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I literally only hear that Google search is bad from HN. No one else in my daily life - my family, friends, people out at my gym or grocery store - ever complai

I literally only hear that Google search is bad from HN. No one else in my daily life - my family, friends, people out at my gym or grocery store - ever complain that Google search is bad. In fact, Google is still the default for looking up information anywhere. It's sentiments like this that make you realize how much of a bubble HN exists in. OTOH, people have trouble using GMail, google home, or ban YouTube in their house for their kids. Next to no one uses Android, etc.

swarnie 4y ago
To expand on this how often do you have a conversation with someone where you evaluate or recommend search engines? I'm going to assume never because that would be both weird and boring.
- eitland 4y ago
  I work in an environment where this might come up once a month or something on slack or in meetings etc.
unsui 4y ago
> Next to no one uses Android, etc. Seems like a self-selection bias, possibly based on socio-economic factors that determine who you surround yourself with. In my personal circles, I only know 1 person who uses iPhone, everyone else uses android.
lta 4y ago
I was wondering and started asking around me, and while they probably don't express it the same we people here do, a significant proportion of the people I asked (~50%) noticed that they spend more time avoiding bad quality connect
ifyoubuildit 4y ago
In some sense, it could seem better to a lot of people just because for whatever query you can imagine there is probably a top N listicle that search will happily present to you, even if it is auto generated nonsense. > Next to no one uses Android, etc. That is sarcasm right? I can't quite tell.
- Iwan-Zotow 4y ago
  US is mostly apple world
  - metamet 4y ago
    "Mostly" being a minor majority, only recently established (September, 2022)? > For the first time ever, there are more iPhones in use in the US than any other type of smartphone. Citing data from analytics firm Counterpoint Research, the Financial Times reports the iPhone overtook the entire Android ecosystem in June to claim 50 percent of US market share [...] > By 2010, two years after its debut, Android overtook iOS to claim the larger install base. Ever since then, Google’s mobile operating system has been the dominant force in the global smartphone market, claiming more than 70 percent market share as of 2022, according to Statcounter. https://www.engadget.com/iphone-overtakes-android-us-market-share-223251196.html https://www.engadget.com/iphone-overtakes-android-us-market-...
  - ssnistfajen 4y ago
    Android has a 48.2% mobile OS market share in the US as of November 2022: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held-by-smartphone-platforms-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held... Claiming "next to no one uses Android" is just plain wrong even in the US.
gspetr 4y ago
>Next to no one uses Android Wait, what? Who's in the bubble now?
- scrollaway 4y ago
  American bubble. US people don’t realise the world runs on Android.
  - Entinel 4y ago
    This is the answer here. I believe iOS wins the US but world wide Android has a 72% market share.
    - bobbyrullo 4y ago
      Even in the US it's like 45% Android, so "no one uses android" is absurd in any context.
      - rubatuga 4y ago
        Maybe OP is saying nobody important uses android
      - chihuahua 4y ago
        "I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him." - famous quote from 1972
    - stocknoob 4y ago
      You need to multiply the market share by the wealth of the participants. What fraction of the world’s wealth (easier to measure than influence) runs on Android? Elon using iOS has more influence than how many impoverished billions? This is why German and Japanese are often localized before other languages with more speakers. Not saying it’s right, but just pointing out the reality. The world runs based on the decision makers, who use iOS.
      - 4y ago
xwdv 4y ago
It’s not a bubble. If you want to hear basic opinions from the everyday person then sure, go talk to your gym bros and grocery store Facebook moms about Google. That’s if you’re not met with blank stares. They don’t know what they don’t know. HN is a much more distinguished community possessing vast technical knowledge. We can approach products from beyond the level of the everyday person and can give deeper appraisal of their worth. Some here may have even built those products, or at least could build a distilled version of them in a weekend for fun.
westernpopular 4y ago
Because non-tech people don't think about which search engine they're using. Doesn't mean it's not bad.
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
  People care when things are bad. They don't care when things are fine. Not good or great, but fine. It gets normal folks the information they were looking for the vast majority of the time. Whether the results "got worse" is irrelevant when the results are still what people were looking for.
  - eitland 4y ago
    Many continued to use Altavista or something until a friendly sysadmin or another early user showed them Google. Same with IE, if no one showed them Firefox they just stuck with IE.
bobinux 4y ago
Haven't you noticed how search results quality has changed let us say from 2007-2013 and comparing recent time period? I used to get the best information, websites, media material that I was looking from the rarest sources on the web, even probably rare to find given my geo location. Today I usually get information not by the quality, but from "the biggest brands" on the web. I was surprised that I didn't find one specific forum in over 20 search pages, but then I had checked my bookmarks and the site was still running and functional and contained what I was exactly looking by the keywords and other possible search factors. These days I just feel I get the information sources that are the most advertised or well branded, but do not reflect the accuracy of what I'm looking for.
- pxoe 4y ago
  it's starting to get really hard to believe that, as people repeat 'wow, search used to be better and now it's trash', remembering only the good parts, rewriting their memories of it, and just having it literally be 'well somebody said it, so it must be true'. 'i remember how it used to be a decade ago', well, sure you do. and yeah, somebody could dig out their search history takeouts and do some kind of opinionated pondering about it, but this ain't it. and if one wants to experience real search results difference, just switch back to, say, duckduckgo for a bit, and see how many times you just end up giving up and googling stuff instead.
  - TheHappyOddish 4y ago
    I pondered on this for a while, unsure if my memory was false. Then I switched to Kagi and it felt like Google 15 years ago. I was served the content I was looking for, not the content Google wants me to look at. It's not perfect, but 9/10 cases (and I do 50+ searches a day) it's great, and validates my perception of the quality of Google going down (or less cynically, the likelihood that Google is optimising for the general public, and I'm an outlier).
  - doublepg23 4y ago
    DDG just uses Bing though, it’s bad but Bing was never particularly good.
IAmNotACellist 4y ago
In my daily life, all my tech coworkers and zoomer (and older) friends in VRC say it's horrible, myself included. The only people who don't have a problem are it are my very casual-use family members. TikTok search is apparently better. My version of that is "site:reddit.com", but even that's gotten worse as the culture there becomes more censorious, echo-chambery, and more insane.
lappet 4y ago
Most people I know use Android. I have noticed Android and IPhone users have their own bubbles.
mda 4y ago
Your second paragraph points that you are living in a bubble as well.
talleyrand 4y ago
I've heard this over and over on HN in recent years and I simply don't understand it. Almost any Google search I run has just what I am looking for as the first or second choice. Google frequently knows what I am looking for after I type in the first few words of the search! Are HN people not logged in when they search?
- eitland 4y ago
  For me it is not a problem with ordinary searches: directions, recipes etc, no problem. But try to find a specific error message from an npm package! First you get useless results because Google found something it rather wanted to show you. Then you add doublequotes and realize the Google results are full of utterly irrelevant pages lacking half my keywords.
epolanski 4y ago
I hear it often in my circles that search has degraded.
hypnotortoise 4y ago
You should probably listen to this: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-google-getting-worse/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-google-getting-worse/
eitland 4y ago
Maybe because we were early power users and knew how well it used to work?
ummonk 4y ago
My mother (quite the opposite of a techie) complains about how hard it is to find stuff on Google - especially unbiased stuff that isn't being promoted by a company or individual with a promotional / commercial agenda. I don't think the issue for this is with changes Google has made, but rather with the increasing extent to which it's targeted by SEO spam.
aksx 4y ago
Maybe because other people search in different places. Events/Businesses: Google Maps, Instagram Trend/Tutorials: Tiktok, IG Reels News: Twitter/Social Media/News Outlet of choice Google is for searching new sources of information and either it’s instant (google info box) or takes too long which makes a lasting memory about it being painful.

swarnie 4y ago

To expand on this how often do you have a conversation with someone where you evaluate or recommend search engines? I'm going to assume never because that would be both weird and boring.

eitland 4y ago
I work in an environment where this might come up once a month or something on slack or in meetings etc.

unsui 4y ago

> Next to no one uses Android, etc. Seems like a self-selection bias, possibly based on socio-economic factors that determine who you surround yourself with. In my personal circles, I only know 1 person who uses iPhone, everyone else uses android.

lta 4y ago

I was wondering and started asking around me, and while they probably don't express it the same we people here do, a significant proportion of the people I asked (~50%) noticed that they spend more time avoiding bad quality connect

ifyoubuildit 4y ago

In some sense, it could seem better to a lot of people just because for whatever query you can imagine there is probably a top N listicle that search will happily present to you, even if it is auto generated nonsense. > Next to no one uses Android, etc. That is sarcasm right? I can't quite tell.

Iwan-Zotow 4y ago
US is mostly apple world
- metamet 4y ago
  "Mostly" being a minor majority, only recently established (September, 2022)? > For the first time ever, there are more iPhones in use in the US than any other type of smartphone. Citing data from analytics firm Counterpoint Research, the Financial Times reports the iPhone overtook the entire Android ecosystem in June to claim 50 percent of US market share [...] > By 2010, two years after its debut, Android overtook iOS to claim the larger install base. Ever since then, Google’s mobile operating system has been the dominant force in the global smartphone market, claiming more than 70 percent market share as of 2022, according to Statcounter. https://www.engadget.com/iphone-overtakes-android-us-market-share-223251196.html https://www.engadget.com/iphone-overtakes-android-us-market-...
- ssnistfajen 4y ago
  Android has a 48.2% mobile OS market share in the US as of November 2022: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held-by-smartphone-platforms-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held... Claiming "next to no one uses Android" is just plain wrong even in the US.

gspetr 4y ago

>Next to no one uses Android Wait, what? Who's in the bubble now?

scrollaway 4y ago
American bubble. US people don’t realise the world runs on Android.
- Entinel 4y ago
  This is the answer here. I believe iOS wins the US but world wide Android has a 72% market share.
  - bobbyrullo 4y ago
    Even in the US it's like 45% Android, so "no one uses android" is absurd in any context.
    - rubatuga 4y ago
      Maybe OP is saying nobody important uses android
    - chihuahua 4y ago
      "I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him." - famous quote from 1972
  - stocknoob 4y ago
    You need to multiply the market share by the wealth of the participants. What fraction of the world’s wealth (easier to measure than influence) runs on Android? Elon using iOS has more influence than how many impoverished billions? This is why German and Japanese are often localized before other languages with more speakers. Not saying it’s right, but just pointing out the reality. The world runs based on the decision makers, who use iOS.
    - 4y ago

xwdv 4y ago

It’s not a bubble. If you want to hear basic opinions from the everyday person then sure, go talk to your gym bros and grocery store Facebook moms about Google. That’s if you’re not met with blank stares. They don’t know what they don’t know. HN is a much more distinguished community possessing vast technical knowledge. We can approach products from beyond the level of the everyday person and can give deeper appraisal of their worth. Some here may have even built those products, or at least could build a distilled version of them in a weekend for fun.

westernpopular 4y ago

Because non-tech people don't think about which search engine they're using. Doesn't mean it's not bad.

TheRealPomax 4y ago
People care when things are bad. They don't care when things are fine. Not good or great, but fine. It gets normal folks the information they were looking for the vast majority of the time. Whether the results "got worse" is irrelevant when the results are still what people were looking for.
- eitland 4y ago
  Many continued to use Altavista or something until a friendly sysadmin or another early user showed them Google. Same with IE, if no one showed them Firefox they just stuck with IE.

bobinux 4y ago

Haven't you noticed how search results quality has changed let us say from 2007-2013 and comparing recent time period? I used to get the best information, websites, media material that I was looking from the rarest sources on the web, even probably rare to find given my geo location. Today I usually get information not by the quality, but from "the biggest brands" on the web. I was surprised that I didn't find one specific forum in over 20 search pages, but then I had checked my bookmarks and the site was still running and functional and contained what I was exactly looking by the keywords and other possible search factors. These days I just feel I get the information sources that are the most advertised or well branded, but do not reflect the accuracy of what I'm looking for.

pxoe 4y ago
it's starting to get really hard to believe that, as people repeat 'wow, search used to be better and now it's trash', remembering only the good parts, rewriting their memories of it, and just having it literally be 'well somebody said it, so it must be true'. 'i remember how it used to be a decade ago', well, sure you do. and yeah, somebody could dig out their search history takeouts and do some kind of opinionated pondering about it, but this ain't it. and if one wants to experience real search results difference, just switch back to, say, duckduckgo for a bit, and see how many times you just end up giving up and googling stuff instead.
- TheHappyOddish 4y ago
  I pondered on this for a while, unsure if my memory was false. Then I switched to Kagi and it felt like Google 15 years ago. I was served the content I was looking for, not the content Google wants me to look at. It's not perfect, but 9/10 cases (and I do 50+ searches a day) it's great, and validates my perception of the quality of Google going down (or less cynically, the likelihood that Google is optimising for the general public, and I'm an outlier).
- doublepg23 4y ago
  DDG just uses Bing though, it’s bad but Bing was never particularly good.

IAmNotACellist 4y ago

In my daily life, all my tech coworkers and zoomer (and older) friends in VRC say it's horrible, myself included. The only people who don't have a problem are it are my very casual-use family members. TikTok search is apparently better. My version of that is "site:reddit.com", but even that's gotten worse as the culture there becomes more censorious, echo-chambery, and more insane.

lappet 4y ago

Most people I know use Android. I have noticed Android and IPhone users have their own bubbles.

mda 4y ago

Your second paragraph points that you are living in a bubble as well.

talleyrand 4y ago

I've heard this over and over on HN in recent years and I simply don't understand it. Almost any Google search I run has just what I am looking for as the first or second choice. Google frequently knows what I am looking for after I type in the first few words of the search! Are HN people not logged in when they search?

eitland 4y ago
For me it is not a problem with ordinary searches: directions, recipes etc, no problem. But try to find a specific error message from an npm package! First you get useless results because Google found something it rather wanted to show you. Then you add doublequotes and realize the Google results are full of utterly irrelevant pages lacking half my keywords.

epolanski 4y ago

I hear it often in my circles that search has degraded.

hypnotortoise 4y ago

You should probably listen to this: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-google-getting-worse/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-google-getting-worse/

eitland 4y ago

Maybe because we were early power users and knew how well it used to work?

ummonk 4y ago

My mother (quite the opposite of a techie) complains about how hard it is to find stuff on Google - especially unbiased stuff that isn't being promoted by a company or individual with a promotional / commercial agenda. I don't think the issue for this is with changes Google has made, but rather with the increasing extent to which it's targeted by SEO spam.

aksx 4y ago

Maybe because other people search in different places. Events/Businesses: Google Maps, Instagram Trend/Tutorials: Tiktok, IG Reels News: Twitter/Social Media/News Outlet of choice Google is for searching new sources of information and either it’s instant (google info box) or takes too long which makes a lasting memory about it being painful.