[HN Gopher] If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?
        
       Author : abhinavsharma
       Score  : 41 points
       Date   : 2022-03-18 18:43 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (abhinavsharma.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (abhinavsharma.com)
        
       | hobz22 wrote:
       | i use opera on android, firefox in windows, safari on mac and
       | duckduckgo for everything and have been for YEARS. I'm offended
       | you're including me in your cohort. lol
        
       | TechBro8615 wrote:
       | Give it time.
        
       | Shadonototra wrote:
       | because it is good, the only people who complain about it are on
       | pro-mozilla mediums, even though mozilla sells their users to
       | google, the irony :)
        
       | dkersten wrote:
       | I actually don't use google (search or other services aside form
       | YouTube) very often. As for "everyone", I assume habit and
       | momentum. People are used to it so it's hard to change to
       | something else. Many people also don't know what alternatives
       | there are.
        
       | turbinerneiter wrote:
       | Im so used to the UI (down to the fonts, things I can't even
       | name), that DuckDuckGo looks off to me. So although it is set as
       | my standar search engine, I g! most of the time.
        
         | cruelty2 wrote:
         | Maybe you could write a Greasemonkey extension to redirect
         | requests from Googles page to DuckDuckGo
        
       | ncann wrote:
       | - It's free
       | 
       | - It's better than most alternatives, and in many cases there
       | isn't even an alternative
       | 
       | - People have amassed too much data on Google services and the
       | cost of moving/switching is too high
       | 
       | - People don't care
        
       | frenchy wrote:
       | This article is really not that good, it suggests a bunch of
       | obvious reasons why Google has a moat (Chrome, everyone's
       | personal data) and misses some others (brand recognition). Then
       | it goes and an explains reason why OP thinks Google sucks (to be
       | fair I agree with him, but they're pretty subjective). Finally,
       | OP claims that people are abandoning Google. Their single data
       | point is that since 2009 there have been fewer searches for
       | mortgages, because that couldn't possibly have been the result of
       | an mortgage-driven recession in 2008.
        
       | cryptica wrote:
       | I stopped using Google search. The only Google product I use now
       | are Maps and Android. I used DuckDuckGo for a while and more
       | recently I switched to Qwant. They're all approximately the same.
       | 
       | I don't think that PageRank or similar algorithms provide any
       | competitive edge at this stage. The real advantage of PageRank in
       | the past is that it was difficult to game, but nowadays,
       | backlinks are all about money and SEO anyway.
        
       | kauguste281 wrote:
       | Google sucks compared to Google from years ago. It's still vastly
       | superior to the modern alternatives. It doesn't help that almost
       | all alternatives out there are just Bing with different window
       | dressing, so going through alternatives is just annoying as they
       | have all the same holes in the search results.
       | 
       | Another big issue is that everybody just tries to copy Google. I
       | don't need Google in less good, I want to see something that
       | organize the Internet in a more useful way than just plain text
       | search (e.g. what about Youtube-style recommendations for
       | websites, old-school Yahoo-style dictionaries, AI categorization,
       | Dejanews-style search for webforums, a button to filter out
       | everything that requires a login or whatever).
       | 
       | I feel there is a lot of untapped potential that gets missed by
       | just trying to be a Google search clone.
        
         | LeoPanthera wrote:
         | Google _had_ a  "search only forums" filter. I was devastated
         | when they took it away.
         | 
         | You can fake it by searching one forum at a time with
         | "site:whatever.com", but you have to do one at a time and that
         | doesn't help if there are forums you don't know about.
         | 
         | Google could double its usefulness overnight just by bringing
         | this back.
        
           | vopi wrote:
           | idk if you know this but kagi has a "discussion" filter
           | (among other filters)
        
         | thrwawy283 wrote:
         | You mentioned things I hadn't thought of. Google's Search
         | accomplishes the goals of 10 years ago, but steps no further
         | than that. It treats its power users like kids, and offers no
         | complex filtering to do things like removing search results
         | that require logins. Librarians love when you come to them to
         | specifically refine your search. Google still has the most
         | useful search, but they've taken away methods to get better
         | results. I remember I was pretty upset when i couldn't search
         | for images by exact dimensions anymore. Bing allows this.
         | 
         | Google's product direction has been inching backwards for a
         | decade.
        
         | thereare5lights wrote:
         | > Google sucks compared to Google from years ago.
         | 
         | Came here to write exactly that
         | 
         | Why are we still using it?
         | 
         | There's nothing better out there.
        
       | GeekyBear wrote:
       | For the same reason that Google pays Apple and Mozilla huge sums
       | every year.
       | 
       | Most people won't change the default settings for their search
       | engine.
        
       | frb wrote:
       | I don't think that most people care about using Google or quality
       | of search results at all.
       | 
       | I'd agree that the average HN user and certain professions like
       | developers do care. I tried them all, kept switching back to
       | Google and recently stuck with Kagi.
       | 
       | If I look at average not-so-technical users, they just enter
       | words into their browser's navigation/search bar and are happy to
       | get useful results.
       | 
       | It's worth to remember that Google is the default search engine
       | in most common browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox).
       | 
       | Recently my wife, a typical Mac and Chrome user, got a new
       | Windows computer from work. She didn't notice that she was using
       | Edge and Bing as browser and search engine until I once looked at
       | her screen and commented on it. She shrugged it off as
       | unimportant and keeps on using it, even though she could change
       | the browser as well as the search engine.
        
       | Havoc wrote:
       | Recently managed to finally de-google my search.
       | 
       | SearXNG funneled through protonVPN
        
       | post_break wrote:
       | I use DDG most of the time, then when I cant find technical stuff
       | I g!. And let's be honest, bing is the king for porn.
        
         | dddnzzz334 wrote:
         | > bing is the king for porn.
         | 
         | I would disagree. It is nice at the start but it shows the same
         | things on the same search result forever. That is not something
         | that you'd want in a Porn search engine, you'd want it to have
         | some amount of randomization.
        
           | post_break wrote:
           | All I know is that I've fed bing some of the most obscure
           | keywords to find what I'm looking for and it's been like "oh
           | I know exactly the video you're looking for I've got you".
        
       | traceroute66 wrote:
       | Just use Startpage, its Google without the tracking.
       | 
       | DuckDuckGo is ok too.
       | 
       | TL;DR there's no reason to default to direct Google.
        
         | disintegore wrote:
         | You still get Google results in the end, which are growing more
         | full of blogspam and affiliate link farms every year.
        
           | spiderice wrote:
           | Google results are the one thing keeping me on Google. Not
           | sure why getting the almost indisputably best results would
           | be bad. Even if they are getting worse, they're still miles
           | ahead of anyone else.
           | 
           | I've been waiting for a Kagi invite for a while because I've
           | heard good things on HN about it. Finally got one a couple
           | weeks ago. Finally switched off of it and back to Google
           | yesterday. The results weren't even in the same ballpark,
           | despite me really wanting it to succeed.
        
             | freediver wrote:
             | > The results weren't even in the same ballpark, despite me
             | really wanting it to succeed.
             | 
             | Have you posted feedback about bad results on
             | kagifeedback.org?
        
       | dleslie wrote:
       | It's the bad default of the devices that most people use.
       | 
       | This is basically the outcome that antitrust prosecutors were
       | concerned for with Microsoft.
       | 
       | Imagine if Android couldn't bundle a browser, or integrate any of
       | Google's SAAS products.
        
       | Jean-Philipe wrote:
       | I tried switching to DDG a few times over the past few years and
       | always found that it got in my way, especially when working. So I
       | usually got annoyed enough after a few weeks and switched back to
       | google.
       | 
       | About two months ago, the opposite happened. Google gave me so
       | much spam and advertising, the search got worse, now I ended up
       | using DDG. It still sucks, for sure, but somehow it sucks less
       | than google now.
        
       | SllX wrote:
       | My standard line on this is that Google today is not as good as
       | Google of (at this point more than) 10 years ago, but it is still
       | the best available option _today_ because nothing is as good as
       | or better than Google of (at this point more than) 10 years ago.
       | 
       | That said there have been a stack of new search engine posts on
       | HN in the last few months and I may have to update my priors once
       | I've had a chance to actually investigate the new options.
       | 
       | EDIT: Maybe I should note that I've also been relying a lot more
       | on Reddit too in the past year since Apollo has a decent search
       | interface for Reddit and I've gotten used to processing new subs
       | quickly and getting information out of them. If nothing else I
       | usually at least have a stack of new terminology to feed my
       | search queries elsewhere.
        
         | dariusj18 wrote:
         | Also, the internet is a far better and worse place than it was
         | 10 years ago. So much more content, but astronomically more bad
         | actors.
        
           | 93po wrote:
           | I think it's also only going to get worse when the amount of
           | bad content and blog spam is 1000 times the ratio it is today
           | due to really human-like AI writing. I am sure Google will
           | find ways to detect this, but it will be a cat and mouse game
           | for decades because at some point we won't be able to tell
           | apart bad, lazy human writing from AI writing.
           | 
           | At some point the internet _has_ to go to a circle of trust
           | model with real identities tied to online content of any
           | sort. I see no other way to curb this pending disaster than
           | being able to block bad actors and bad actors having very
           | limited means to publish under an alias.
        
       | helph67 wrote:
       | Because `common sense' ain't!
        
       | moltke wrote:
       | The truth is that normal people _like_ abusive software. Using
       | software that gives them freedom also gives them the
       | responsibility to understand the behavior of the machine which is
       | something they do not want. No amount of evangelism or possibly
       | even education will fix this. IMO for their own good people who
       | behave this way should not be allowed to use computers and should
       | delegate the task to people who are willing to think through the
       | consequences of using a particular piece of software.
       | 
       | Allowing normal people to use computers is cruel in the same way
       | making a dog order its food over the telephone is.
        
       | andrewstuart wrote:
       | Because people stick with something thats "good enough".
       | 
       | The biggest barrier to any competitor for any product/service
       | anywhere is a "good enough" incumbent.
        
       | scotty79 wrote:
       | I had trouble switching to DuckDuck Go search previously.
       | 
       | It changed when I installed DucDuckGo browser on my phone. It has
       | really good internet decrapifying features and it uses ddg search
       | by default and so far I didn't have a single reason to change
       | that default.
       | 
       | I hope ddg will relese similar browser for desktop. Maybe I'll be
       | able to switch to it then.
        
       | karaterobot wrote:
       | By the end of the article, this is full-on marketing the OPs
       | product, so be aware of that when thinking about how the problem
       | and solution are framed.
       | 
       | It's an interesting question though. I think the answer is that
       | most people don't really care? The bubble we live in is filled
       | with other people who, like us , are very knowledgeable about
       | this domain, pay attention to what's going on behind the scenes,
       | and have very strong opinions on it. 99% of the rest of the world
       | doesn't give the quality and nature of Google search a second
       | thought.
        
       | nightski wrote:
       | I'm not using it directly. Have been using DDG for about 10 years
       | now.
        
       | ct0 wrote:
       | If you're referring to google search specifically, a major tool
       | to combat the spammed ads in search that has helped me is
       | available here:
       | 
       | https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/g-search-filt...
       | 
       | https://iorate.github.io/ublacklist/docs
        
       | anothernewdude wrote:
       | Inertia
        
       | johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
       | I tell everyone to use Bing. It's decent, but better than using
       | Google. Google invades our privacy, keeps users hostages for
       | money. I wish Amazon has built a search engine so that Google's
       | tyrannical regime on internet ends.
        
         | AnimalMuppet wrote:
         | How, exactly, does Google keep users hostage for money?
        
           | johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
           | G Suite Workspace users are being kept hostages by Google
           | unless the users pay more money[1].
           | 
           | [1] https://www.ghacks.net/2022/01/20/google-ends-the-g-
           | suite-le...
        
             | tssge wrote:
             | Can't they just migrate off of it? I guess the only part
             | being held hostage according to the article are their Play
             | Store purchases, if even that (the article says the
             | purchases' fate is unclear).
             | 
             | To me it seems Google has given ample time to either
             | migrate off of it or to become a customer.
        
         | sithadmin wrote:
         | Amazon did build one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A9.com
        
           | johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
           | Oh thank you. We should definitely promote this more.
        
       | Gualdrapo wrote:
       | I still use it mainly for non "standard" search:
       | 
       | - Its location feature is better than DDG or anything else - It
       | has gotten worse a bit, but if I tell it to show me results from
       | Colombia, 95% of the results it will return are from actual
       | websites from Colombia. DDG will throw anything from Latin
       | America, for example. Not to mention the disaster with Bing.
       | 
       | - Its image search feature is still more precise than others.
       | Reverse search won't return sometimes what I'm looking for and I
       | have to resort to Yandex/TinEye/Bing, but still. Oh, and it can
       | search for SVGs, which others can't.
       | 
       | - Double quotes aren't returning exact matches, but other
       | operators are working fine as far as I can tell. Filetype
       | operator is great and way bigger than DDG's, cache operator is
       | great for looking for a cached version of a website that is not
       | working at the moment, the minus operator still works (sans the
       | advertisements).
        
       | nyx_land wrote:
       | Because there is effectively no alternative. Bing and engines
       | that are different frontends for Bing results aren't
       | alternatives, don't kid yourself; it only exists still because
       | Microsoft is another company like Google that shoves their subpar
       | product onto people (by making it the default search on their
       | subpar OS that took over the world) and hopes they never seek out
       | alternatives. Most people are too dumb and lazy to seek out
       | better alternatives, so they stick with the default search
       | engines for Edge or Chrome. For everyone else, there is no real
       | alternative, so while Google's search results are getting
       | objectively worse, it doesn't matter because it's at least a
       | lesser of two evils. They don't need to worry about becoming more
       | mediocre when they've made sure to put themselves in a position
       | where they basically have no competition.
        
       | penjelly wrote:
       | i use brave and brave.search, havent had search issues since
       | switching over.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | falcolas wrote:
       | The moat is worse than we think. New search engines are not only
       | hobbled by the bandwidth and processing power and storage
       | required to spider the web, but by the websites who will
       | preemptively disallow them _because_ they 're not Google.
       | 
       | I can't imagine trying to build a new search engine when the
       | landscape is intentionally (if justifiably) hostile to new search
       | engines.
        
         | ALittleLight wrote:
         | Can't you just set your user agent to Google bot?
        
         | nr2x wrote:
         | robots.txt is a joke tho.
        
       | sithadmin wrote:
       | I'm defaulting to Brave, then falling back on DuckDuckGo, then
       | Bing, then Google these days. Feels a lot like the early web
       | again.
        
       | fdgsdfogijq wrote:
       | Honestly I think people are completely underestimating the
       | difficulty of a good search engine. Google was better ten years
       | ago because search was an easier problem to solve back then. End
       | of story. Nobody is coming along with a better search engine.
       | There is too much spam, content gaming, and money to be made by
       | hacking search.
       | 
       | These posts should almost be blocked from hacker news. ITs a
       | fantasy. Its like saying that democracy has failed so lets
       | replace it, replace with what? Its the best we can get given the
       | alternatives, and its flaws will always be exploited.
        
         | DantesKite wrote:
         | I don't think these posts should be blocked, because they
         | create discussion, which creates interest, which incentivizes
         | for problem solving.
         | 
         | Humans are incredibly good at solving engineering problems they
         | can see from a mile away, although it takes time to solve.
        
         | taysix wrote:
         | Not sure if you read the post. They don't advocate for
         | replacing Google. They want to add onto Google and other search
         | engines.
        
         | joering2 wrote:
         | Democracy would be best replaced with cashless society. Society
         | based on everyone value of doing what they love doing most (aka
         | hobbyist), and virtually everything else replaced by robots and
         | technology we already have. This is what's coming eventually,
         | but its not something that can be installed on the top of your
         | "operating system"; you will have to format the whole hard-
         | drive (civil war)
        
           | xboxnolifes wrote:
           | I don't understand how any of that has anything to do with
           | democracy.
        
           | FastMonkey wrote:
           | I suppose in the absence of cash we would just force some
           | people to do the necessary tasks that aren't anyone's
           | favourite hobbies?
        
         | zargon wrote:
         | No. Google is an actively hostile experience. Try it without
         | adblock and get a taste of how most people get treated by
         | Google. And for the search results, Kagi is already better for
         | 90% of my queries.
         | 
         | It's much more difficult now to build a competitive search
         | engine, but saying it's impossible and discussions should be
         | banned is toxic. (And already basically proven wrong with
         | existing competing search engines.)
        
           | Kuinox wrote:
           | I disagree, Kagi is not yet "better in 90% of the queries"
           | than google, it's good enough to not have to launch google in
           | 90% of it's query.
        
             | zargon wrote:
             | This is probably true for me, if we also say that 50% of
             | the queries are orders of magnitude higher quality on Kagi.
        
             | omnicognate wrote:
             | Kagi's better than Google for me. Proof is that initially I
             | only had it set up as default search on one device but I've
             | progressively switched them all over out of annoyance with
             | crap google results. I haven't yet had to go to google once
             | to finish a search I started on Kagi.
        
           | fdgsdfogijq wrote:
           | I think that with current technology, beating google at the
           | scale they run at is impossible. I think with advances it
           | NLP, its possible. But right now, its pie in the sky.
        
           | black_puppydog wrote:
           | Came here to mention kagi. Very happy user here. The no-spam
           | results make it so much more useful as a tool. Also, "block
           | this site from myresults forever" gives so much more agency
           | to the user than anything Google has release in years.
           | Googles "we know better" just reads as a big middle finger to
           | me.
        
             | tartoran wrote:
             | Wow, they have that? That's what I always wanted from
             | Google and they never delivered. Im sure they had reasons.
             | I really don't think they want to empower their users, they
             | are even hostile to search users and content creators, amp
             | comes to mind and am glad it dissapeared already. Meanwhile
             | I'be been using duckduck but i'll give kagi a go.
        
             | lordnacho wrote:
             | What happens when you ask it how many Ukrainian generals
             | have died? Does it insist on giving you pages and pages
             | about Russian generals, like Google?
             | 
             | I was looking for this and it really annoys me how it
             | thinks it knows what I want.
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | sltkr wrote:
           | Kagi requires users to sign up (even though it's currently
           | free?) which is 1000x more user-hostile than anything Google
           | does and makes it a nonstarter as far as I'm concerned.
        
             | omnicognate wrote:
             | Kagi is intended to be a paid service when it launches.
             | This is something I actively want. It should make them the
             | opposite of user-hostile. Their users will be the source of
             | their revenue so they will need to provide value or lose
             | them. Login is a necessary part of that. I'm happy to take
             | both that inconvenience and the cost.
        
           | buildbot wrote:
           | +1 kagi was the first alternative engine that has passed all
           | of my random tests, mostly weird cameras and python coding
           | searches...
        
         | joe_the_user wrote:
         | I'd say you're half right. Things are harder now and the
         | success of Google has contributed to this.
         | 
         | However, I think Google has severely degenerated from just two
         | years ago, when most of the problems were fully in effect.
         | 
         | Google is a bit of a product of the situation of scams being
         | the easiest way anyone makes online.
        
         | RC_ITR wrote:
         | The progression that people almost always forget:
         | 
         | 1) New system comes out that indexes/controls/regulates a
         | naively created dataset
         | 
         | 2) Data consumers adopt that system and experience benefits
         | 
         | 3) Data suppliers learn rules of system and take advantage of
         | it to improve the positioning of their data, thus breaking the
         | rules of a system built on the assumption of naive creation
         | 
         | 4) Users complain about the broken system
         | 
         | 5) New entrants realize that the original system actually
         | solved the core problem really well, and there are no easy ways
         | to solve the 'gaming the system' problem
         | 
         | 6) Flawed system remains the best available option indefinitely
         | 
         | It's like entropy, there's just no fighting it.
         | 
         | EDIT: And to extend this beyond Google - do you see a lot of
         | long text blocks in 7 second tik tok videos? That's because the
         | creator found a way to game the algorithm.
        
         | bsder wrote:
         | > Honestly I think people are completely underestimating the
         | difficulty of a good search engine.
         | 
         | No, they are underestimating the difficulty of _funding_ a good
         | search engine.
         | 
         | I liked the runnaroo search very much as did several of my
         | friends. The guy who ran it couldn't fund it. He shut it down.
         | 
         | Altavista (Yeah, that far back) had a nice feature where it
         | would draw a cluster graph of your search results. So, if you
         | searched for "python", it would show your results but would
         | also draw a little graph and you could see that "Hey, there are
         | two clusters here--programming and reptiles." You could then
         | click on the "programming" node and the "reptiles" cluster
         | would go away. It allowed you to drill through irrelevant stuff
         | _really_ quickly.
         | 
         | Note how that feature doesn't exist today--in spite of orders
         | of magnitude more programmers being thrown at search, graph
         | algorithms, and nifty Javascript web UIs. I wonder why ...
         | 
         | (/sarcasm in case you missed it. I don't wonder why. Such a
         | feature would let you drill through irrelevant Ad and SEO
         | garbage too quickly and would impact Google's revenue.)
        
         | Kye wrote:
         | People said this about pre-Google search engines. Someone will
         | figure out the next PageRank and give us another 10-20 years of
         | useful search.
        
         | thomassmith65 wrote:
         | Honestly I think people are completely underestimating
         | the difficulty of a good search engine
         | 
         | I suspect that is not difficult so much as expensive.
         | 
         | Boutique search engines pop up all the time here on HN, but
         | they can't compete fairly against Google, without the resources
         | to crawl a billion webpages day after day.
        
         | kodah wrote:
         | > Nobody is coming along with a better search engine
         | 
         | https://neeva.com/ better than pretty much any solution (Qwant,
         | DDG, etc) I've personally tested. It also indexes specific
         | websites like StackOverflow, GitHub, and GMail.
         | 
         | Edit:
         | 
         | Neeva does require an account to create because eventually the
         | product is going to require a subscription.
        
           | sokoloff wrote:
           | "See results for '<my search term>' Create your free Neeva
           | account."
           | 
           | "To continue searching and access all of Neeva's features,
           | create your free account. Already a Neeva member? Sign in"
           | 
           | Yeah, no.
        
             | kodah wrote:
             | Ah, Neeva is eventually going to be a paid product, that's
             | why it's that way. That said, their membership is pretty
             | cheap for what you get.
        
               | sokoloff wrote:
               | I don't mind giving my email or making an account after I
               | have any inkling that the product might be worth deleting
               | a few spam emails. Neeva was giving me a modal popup in
               | my first minute; that's never going to get my email.
        
           | AlexCoventry wrote:
           | I experimented with neeva, because I'd really like an
           | alternative to Google, even a paid one. However, I found its
           | results pretty disappointing. At least for my work, I had to
           | go back to Google, because I don't want to waste time "on the
           | clock."
        
       | jeffbee wrote:
       | We have to have this discussion daily, apparently, but nobody,
       | absolutely nobody in this thread and certainly not the article,
       | has established an objective basis for "Google sucks". The most
       | likely alternate theory, which the article doesn't bother
       | discussing, is that Google does not in practice "suck" at all.
        
       | np- wrote:
       | We're all just searching Reddit anyway and it's just easier to
       | use Google to search Reddit than to use Reddit's own search tool.
        
       | compiler-guy wrote:
       | The web itself sucks more and more, and Google results reflect
       | that. Much good discussion migrated to siloed locations like
       | facebook groups. There are thousands of pages of technical
       | content that are barely redone versions of each other. Each SEO'd
       | to within an inch of its life. These are quite similar to the
       | dozens of identical off-brand products one finds on amazon.
       | 
       | I would love to see Google results get better. But the web itself
       | is a mess.
        
         | RSHEPP wrote:
         | This has a what seems to be a positive effect in my life
         | though. I use the library much more than I used to. Instead of
         | finding blogs using Google like the first part of my career, I
         | find books at the local library.
        
       | HstryrsrBttn wrote:
        
       | Koshkin wrote:
       | Paraphrasing Stroustrup, there are only two kinds of services:
       | the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.
        
       | mountainriver wrote:
       | The "google search sucks" rhetoric is getting a bit old. It works
       | really really well and is free. I rarely ever have issues with
       | it.
       | 
       | I think it's just getting trendy to dog on
        
         | ikiris wrote:
         | Its only even really trendy here on HN. This place is getting
         | less and less useful over time.
        
       | dash2 wrote:
       | I use search.brave.com and it's usually OK. It fails on some
       | complex queries. Unfortunately SEO spam for Google also catches
       | Brave.
        
       | ncmncm wrote:
       | Because Microsoft sucks too? Because browsers default to
       | connecting to it?
        
       | alligatorplum wrote:
       | This feels like one of those things where people only notice the
       | bad experiences, bad search results, and ignore all the times it
       | was right, good/neutral search results.
       | 
       | One of google search's biggest advantages is the ability to save
       | a click for the user. If I search for "NCAA scores" google will
       | show me the live scores directly instead of showing me a link to
       | the ncaa website which also shows me the score but at the expense
       | of me having to click on the link.
       | 
       | IMO, the right way to dethrone google search would be to have
       | better (or more) QOL features.
        
       | gumby wrote:
       | Is that a notion page? I couldn't use space to go to the next
       | page (the oldest pagination system in the (computing) world).
       | 
       | So I stopped reading at the end of the page.
        
       | richardsocher wrote:
       | They don't know yet about you.com? - No spam, no ads, you control
       | the ranker with your source preferences, hardcore private mode
       | that doesn't save anything nor uses your location (even DDG saves
       | your queries and gives location-based results), many developer
       | apps that include what you want - eg code snippets in a
       | StackOverflow app, AI apps like you.com/write that would write
       | essays for you, etc.
       | 
       | Also, many folks (outside the hackernews crowd) never change
       | their defaults and Google pays Apple 15B per year, as well as
       | Samsung and many others, to be that default.
       | 
       | Disclaimer: I work at you.com
        
         | timothylaurent wrote:
         | You's been a refreshing break from the Google-sphere - and it
         | gets better and better - The mobile browser is also great!
        
       | ubvhgidft wrote:
       | > If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?
       | 
       | If prison food sucks why do prisoners eat it?
        
         | dymk wrote:
         | https://www.google.com/search?q=list+of+alternate+search+eng...
        
         | philovivero wrote:
         | If Vladimir Putin sucks, why is everyone letting him be in
         | charge over there? If Donald Trump sucks why did we ele-- If
         | Barack Obama sucks-- The FBI sucks. Facebook sucks. C sucks.
         | The WWW sucks. Fiat currency sucks.
         | 
         | Maybe the real truth is "the top N% of everything sucks?"
        
           | mcbutterbunz wrote:
           | The truth is, everything sucks. The more you use something
           | the more you see its faults. The grass is always greener...
        
           | dariusj18 wrote:
           | Rule 44 of the internet
           | 
           | http://web.archive.org/web/20070110035128/http://www.encyclo.
           | ..
           | 
           | Edit: NSFW
        
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