I havent made the leap yet, but it's pushing me closer and closer to a paid service like kagi. The thought of paying a subscription for search is abhorrent but it might be the only option for sanity.
> But I would really prefer if Search just worked the way it did in the first place.
Which is one thing technologists often screw up: They misinterpret how people react to change; and they misinterpret how people really use their products.
Google Search used to be (and still is) a way to find places on the internet. As much as I like AI in searches, I agree; when I want to find the thing, I don't want AI getting in the way.
Their inability to adapt to fix the problems caused by AI and SEO have caused the product to fall apart and users went somewhere else. I do think however their decision to make search tedious for users by moving the correct answer deep into the page (or at least favouring pages that did that) was a brilliant play for advertising but has killed a lot of their core use, making it easier to leave.
I remember in around 2011 realizing that ~85% of the first page of Google search results was ads. I haven’t used Google search much in the last 5 years, mostly due to this but also because of how they rewarded blog spam.
Google's non US/EN results MUST be absolute shit. That's the only take-away I've ever been able to get out of comments like this.
I don't know if it's the language piece, the geography and routing, maybe something else in the backend user profile... Idk
There is no other search engine that seems to come remotely close for me for actually showing me what I'm looking for, and on the first page. I've tried dozens probably over the years based on random comments from people, but never find anything else close to the results quality Google search gives me.
I wish I knew for sure what the difference is! Maybe query verbage, search modifiers, etc?
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket"
- Eric Hoffer
I've been playing the Ocarina of Time remake and whenever I get stuck trying to get a certain item or progress on a quest, I'll fire up Claude voice chat and ask it for guidance, and it regularly gets confused and gives me wrong answers (somewhere around ~30% of the time).
Given how long these models have been out and that it's a highly constrained game world from almost 30 years ago which is documented top to bottom, I struggle to understand how Claude is still so bad at straightforward questions with straightforward answers. This was a solved problem (albeit with a less modern UX) in the legacy internet and it doesn't actually feel like getting the right answer is necessarily easier.
Which is one thing technologists often screw up: They misinterpret how people react to change; and they misinterpret how people really use their products.
Google Search used to be (and still is) a way to find places on the internet. As much as I like AI in searches, I agree; when I want to find the thing, I don't want AI getting in the way.
I don't know if it's the language piece, the geography and routing, maybe something else in the backend user profile... Idk
There is no other search engine that seems to come remotely close for me for actually showing me what I'm looking for, and on the first page. I've tried dozens probably over the years based on random comments from people, but never find anything else close to the results quality Google search gives me.
I wish I knew for sure what the difference is! Maybe query verbage, search modifiers, etc?
- Eric Hoffer
I've been playing the Ocarina of Time remake and whenever I get stuck trying to get a certain item or progress on a quest, I'll fire up Claude voice chat and ask it for guidance, and it regularly gets confused and gives me wrong answers (somewhere around ~30% of the time).
Given how long these models have been out and that it's a highly constrained game world from almost 30 years ago which is documented top to bottom, I struggle to understand how Claude is still so bad at straightforward questions with straightforward answers. This was a solved problem (albeit with a less modern UX) in the legacy internet and it doesn't actually feel like getting the right answer is necessarily easier.