Google became useful and popular because it created tools that people want to use.
Since Google+, however well intended that project may be, Google has shifted to creating tools that it wants people to use.
Couple that with the fact that their search engine reached an apex some years ago and that virtually every change since has damaged it and made it less useful (particularly the insistence that people prefer millions of useless answers over a small number of useful ones - or indeed, a zero count that itself is useful), and you have a company that, currently, is in decline.
I don't think it's too late. I don't think Google is evil, or has bad engineers. But it needs to step back and ask itself if it's really going in the right direction.
Showing posts with label google+. Show all posts
Showing posts with label google+. Show all posts
Saturday, October 26, 2013
Monday, August 15, 2011
Google and Motorola
Well, I think it's a good thing.
It'd have been nicer if Google didn't feel obliged to buy Motorola just for the patents, but, that's the world we live in. In the meantime, perhaps there's also a major DBMS vendor they could buy to stop a certain corporation whose most recent act of villainy was to, uh, swallow the Sun?
It'd have been nicer if Google didn't feel obliged to buy Motorola just for the patents, but, that's the world we live in. In the meantime, perhaps there's also a major DBMS vendor they could buy to stop a certain corporation whose most recent act of villainy was to, uh, swallow the Sun?
Thursday, July 14, 2011
If only Google had a decent search engine
Three reasons why Google is an awful search engine these days, and how they can fix it.
1. If anything's obscure in your search results, Google will ignore it.
For some reason, Google are under the impression that it's more helpful to have 100,000 wrong answers, than three good ones, or even that "There's nothing like that on the web" might actually often be more helpful than pages upon pages upon pages upon pages upon pages of irrelevant, useless, links, whose lack of relevance has to be ploddingly checked one by effing one.
2. Google will change your search for no good reason
Some time ago, Google started posting, above the search results, a little note along the lines of "Did you intend to search for something or other" where something or other was your search string passed through a spell checker - or something. 98% of the time it was wrong, but occasionally something useful would come through. And then the user could click on that suggestion, and get the search results they wanted.
Not any more. Now it just automatically searches for the "corrected" version which means if you're not searching for "Brittnay speahs nood pix" but, say, the name of a product, or a code, or something else that, well, is the kind of thing you go to Google to find, you'll get pages upon pages upon pages upon pages upon pages of irrelevant, useless, links, whose lack of relevance will seem completely unexplained unless you happen to scroll back up and notice that the bit of text that looked like "Did you intend to search for something or other" had, in fact, been "Showing search results for 'Google is awesome'. Click here to search instead for 'Obscure error message #3193'"
3. You can't click to focus any more without the world's most useless feature interrupting you.
Some idiot at Google, and I use the word "idiot" without reservation, I don't care how much effort and cleverness was involved in developing the feature, decided that people aren't interested in the content of webpages. Oh no. What they're looking for, when they do a search, is some idea of the effing color scheme of the pages that might contain the information they're looking for. And so millions were invested in creating a tool that would ensure that if a user wants to see the color scheme of any page listed in their search results, they can do so without actually visiting the page in question.
So convinced of their own cleverness were these idiots that they didn't stop there. They incorporated into Google as a mandatory search feature - you can't turn it off - and set it up so it'll be invoked if you click anywhere on a search results page that's vaguely close to a search result. When you do so, your web browser will do a little dance as it processes some Javascript that downloads a thumbnail rendering of the website in question, showing a scaled down image that's just large enough to see the color scheme, but not large enough to bother your pretty eyes with any readable content.
How can Google fix these problems
It's quite simple really. All they have to do is remove the instant preview crap, and by default search for pages containing all of the words/phrases that the user asked for.
Will they do this? Hell no.
1. If anything's obscure in your search results, Google will ignore it.
For some reason, Google are under the impression that it's more helpful to have 100,000 wrong answers, than three good ones, or even that "There's nothing like that on the web" might actually often be more helpful than pages upon pages upon pages upon pages upon pages of irrelevant, useless, links, whose lack of relevance has to be ploddingly checked one by effing one.
2. Google will change your search for no good reason
Some time ago, Google started posting, above the search results, a little note along the lines of "Did you intend to search for something or other" where something or other was your search string passed through a spell checker - or something. 98% of the time it was wrong, but occasionally something useful would come through. And then the user could click on that suggestion, and get the search results they wanted.
Not any more. Now it just automatically searches for the "corrected" version which means if you're not searching for "Brittnay speahs nood pix" but, say, the name of a product, or a code, or something else that, well, is the kind of thing you go to Google to find, you'll get pages upon pages upon pages upon pages upon pages of irrelevant, useless, links, whose lack of relevance will seem completely unexplained unless you happen to scroll back up and notice that the bit of text that looked like "Did you intend to search for something or other" had, in fact, been "Showing search results for 'Google is awesome'. Click here to search instead for 'Obscure error message #3193'"
3. You can't click to focus any more without the world's most useless feature interrupting you.
Some idiot at Google, and I use the word "idiot" without reservation, I don't care how much effort and cleverness was involved in developing the feature, decided that people aren't interested in the content of webpages. Oh no. What they're looking for, when they do a search, is some idea of the effing color scheme of the pages that might contain the information they're looking for. And so millions were invested in creating a tool that would ensure that if a user wants to see the color scheme of any page listed in their search results, they can do so without actually visiting the page in question.
So convinced of their own cleverness were these idiots that they didn't stop there. They incorporated into Google as a mandatory search feature - you can't turn it off - and set it up so it'll be invoked if you click anywhere on a search results page that's vaguely close to a search result. When you do so, your web browser will do a little dance as it processes some Javascript that downloads a thumbnail rendering of the website in question, showing a scaled down image that's just large enough to see the color scheme, but not large enough to bother your pretty eyes with any readable content.
How can Google fix these problems
It's quite simple really. All they have to do is remove the instant preview crap, and by default search for pages containing all of the words/phrases that the user asked for.
Will they do this? Hell no.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)