Every complaint in the article is about the behavior of the website named google dot com. Google dot com is not the internet. If the complaints were about how Google is changing the behavior of other websites I could maybe somewhat get behind that. But in light of the content of the article the title makes no sense whatsoever.
"Google sometimes gets things wrong" would be a more accurate title. It wouldn't get any upvotes, nor deserve any (surely it's obvious that a website trying to be as many things as Google does will sometimes be inaccurate). But it would be more truthful.
Normally you would be right. Service X is not the Internet.
But this doesn't really apply anymore once service X dominates the way a large proportion of the western population are trying to locate something - as opposed to clicking on links or bookmarks.
Reality is what actually matters. Not what people think or what they wish. It is what people do and what actually happens.
The reality is that Google not only holds a vastly dominant market position in search - but its search is the default way a majority of people interact with the Internet.
The address bar in your browser is not just an address bar. It is both a search bar and an address bar. And that makes a real difference when the search engine behind it is most often one search engine.
That's probably because Google is still good enough for most people, that there hasn't yet been a need to change the search engine. If Google becomes useless people will organically move to something else, of course it will first start with the tech savvy people, but as with all things it will trickle down to others. If the alternative isn't better then Google then, of course, nothing will change. I don't really see a reason why people feel the need to be so negative about pretty much everything, same goes with every aspect of life.
I am aware that this comment is more or less useless to many, but I still wanted to write it, because I have the power and the freedom to express my _opinion_, and because I still hope that there are people that will understand what I'm trying to say.
Let Google be Google.
If Google's vision sings the same song as the song of the people, then the people will use it.
If it doesn't then people will find another search engine that will sing a song that people will like.
Or in other words, I don't see a reason for us to try to change Google, if Google will want to be the primary search engine, then Google will have to change on it's own.
Am I completly wrong? I Google strong enough to be able to shape the song of creation (strong enough to be able to prevent any other search engine from rising up even though the other search engine could be better)?
> If Google becomes useless people will organically move to something else,
This is not what happens easily. In a near monopoly, the monopoly product can be significantly worse than other options, or what is reasonably possible, but people will continue using it for a long time because of various economic, network, psychological lock-in effects.
Agreed, but even "Google sometimes gets things wrong" isn't entirely accurate.
So it favors popularity over accuracy. So what? Google is not in the business of providing the most accurate search results. It's in the business of generating ad revenue. If popular links make Google more valuable, then favoring them is "getting things right" from the perspective of a private company.
I don't think it's correct to say that it favors popularity over accuracy. Actually I think that is a seriously editorialized take as well, not in keeping with the spirit of HN. I think it would be more correct to say that much of the time popularity is accuracy, in that it's what the searcher is looking for. When there are a variety of interpretations of a query, the most popular interpretation is the rational prior expectation. When not -- for example, when I search for "go" with a history of searching for programming related topics -- Google tries to give me what I'm looking for.
But it's also just a hard problem. That featured snippet about the dentist for example: Google's computers aren't investigative journalists. The purpose of the featured snippet is actually to favor accuracy over popularity by deferring to journalists when Google senses that the searcher is looking for information about an event that was covered in the news. However, if the journalists get it wrong, how is Google going to know? Dollars to donuts, if Google actually knew the right answer, that's what they would surface.
As the defacto front page to the internet, it is aeguably in society's best interest for search results to return more than SEO spam and ads.
I think the modern state of Google is a huge disservice to civilization, compared to what it was and could be. By prioritizing popularity it reduces the majority of search queries to the lowest common denominator and encourages shallow, non-technical culture.
I think what we're seeing in the refinement algorithm is a regression to the layman's mean, so to speak, as they tune (train?) The algorithm to work better for the majority of their users, who happen to be non-technical.
But when you excessively dumb down technology you reduce incentive for people to learn anything and, more importantly here, the dumbing down means showing entertainment and SEO results over possibly more technical content.
Personally I find it disheartening when I search for technical words and the only results are celebrities or media.
They provide value in a specific form, which is aligned to their goals, and it may or may not overlap with what's optimal for society. But they're not in the business of providing what's best for society. That's a byproduct of competition, not a goal from the outset.
But that's the thing. Any single actor can only provide sub-optimal results, but competition and regulation create a competitive game which provides society with optimal results.
Google isn't wrong – it's actually doing its part really well. It's either competition or regulation that need tweaking. Probably both.
In other words
> an economic system that by it's very nature can only provide sub-optimal results is broken.
The economic system can provide optimal results. Individual actors can but don't need to in order for the prior statement to be true.
"Google sometimes gets things wrong" would be a more accurate title. It wouldn't get any upvotes, nor deserve any (surely it's obvious that a website trying to be as many things as Google does will sometimes be inaccurate). But it would be more truthful.