[michaelgrosner2]

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.

[bobinux]

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]

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.

[Barrin92]

because the rarest sources of the web were relatively speaking much more popular back then when the internet had about 20 pages in total. The entire scale of the web has been growing x-fold every year.

So what was relatively relevant back then is now irrelevant to a general audience and as a result has been pushed back. You could argue Google should bias search much more towards individual history but that has its own pitfalls, both in terms of results and privacy wise.

Basically blame your fellow searchers for clicking and wanting big brand stuff, Google just gives you what the internet considers relevant.

[moultano]

Send me your queries to debug if you remember them.

[gspetr]

>Next to no one uses Android

Wait, what?

Who's in the bubble now?

[anifru]

I thought it was clear the poster was talking about their daily life, and not commenting on world statistics.

[college_physics]

The fact that somebody writing on HN doesnt know this shows you how low information the world really is.

We generally assume too much about the shared knowledge basis. There would be much less friction if we could improve on that

[scrollaway]

American bubble. US people don’t realise the world runs on Android.

[talleyrand]

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]

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.

[unsui]

> 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.

[ifyoubuildit]

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]

US is mostly apple world

[IAmNotACellist]

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.

[swarnie]

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]

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

[lappet]

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

[aksx]

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.

[ummonk]

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.

[westernpopular]

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

[TheRealPomax]

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.

[lta]

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

[hypnotortoise]

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

[mda]

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

[epolanski]

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

[xwdv]

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.

[eitland]

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