Ask HN: Is Google Dead?
Why do I need Google if it only shows results from Reddit? If you can just go to reddit and do search there? Has anyone else noticed that Google doesn't index source code from GitHub anymore? I could have sworn that you used to be able to search for source code that is on GitHub (e.g. error message strings), but today the index doesn't seem to include the source code at all. The pages with the source code are in the index but you can only find them by file name. Big loss for Google if so. I also mourn the Google cache. I bet site owners were lobbying to get rid of it, but it's really lame that Google caved after all these years... Not an answer to your question, but Github code search is great: https://github.com/features/code-search Yeah I'm really glad GitHub finally has functioning code search (how many years did it take?), but I don't like being forced to use it for simple stuff. It's slow and doesn't include source code or documentation that's not on GitHub. I don't always know in advance whether the answer to my query lives in GitHub or not... It also requires to log in, AFAIK. "I also mourn the Google cache." Google cache still works. Too early to mourn. For example, https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:... I do all searches from command line. This allows me to control the SERP, e.g., make own basic HTML metasearch SERP with no JS or CSS. I can put cache links in if I want. I can mix results from different search engines. I can do temporally separated continuation searches to avoid rate limits. And so on. I can also rewrite URLs with the local forward proxy to use any cache I want. I can also rewrite response bodies. If Google disables public access to their cache, there are many other options. I have never relied on it. Yeah it works, but a button leading to it has been removed. It operates more like a hidden feature now. It's been my experience as well, 80% of websites that had previously content displayed in google results are just not in Google index any more. Google only left titles of the pages in index which won't rank well in search results and won't be able to find the content of those pages. Google isn't dead because it still has a massive user base, generating more money than ever. Many people think Google is the internet, and Android and Chrome users have Google as their default search engine. Google even pays Apple billions to be the default on their devices. So from a business perspective, Google is thriving and will continue to do so for years. However, the quality of Google's search results has declined, which is widely acknowledged by tech-savvy users and even the general public. As an SEO expert, I've observed that while Google has always battled spam, they've recently shifted their focus away from website content and towards other factors like brand recognition and user engagement metrics. This change likely stems from their anticipation of AI-generated content. Consequently, a poorly written article on a well-known site like Forbes can outrank a well-researched piece on a lesser-known blog. Google has also started using AI for ranking, despite previously stating they wouldn't. As a result, alternative search engines like Bing and DuckDuckGo have become viable options. However, Bing hasn't significantly improved; Google has simply gotten worse. People are likely to leave Google as soon as a clearly superior alternative emerges. An ideal Google alternative would be like ChatGPT but with less abstraction and more factual accuracy. While ChatGPT provides direct answers, it's a 50/50 chance whether the information is true or made up. A real competitor would offer ChatGPT-like functionality with a stronger emphasis on facts and sources, providing up-to-date knowledge on any topic. > Google isn't dead because it still has a massive user base, generating more money than ever. Do you remember when iPhone was introduced and Nokia/Symbian was still the king? This is exactly the reasoning line that Symbian/Nokia devs kept repeating when iPhone was released. I remember arguing with them endlessly. It took around 4 years for the company to collapse completely. Nokia lacked vision. They had a widget much like the original iphone, with better resolution (800x480 vs 480x320), had an app store, and has a user friendly GUI. Rather ironically Nokia wouldn't add a WAN chip to their WIFI nokia 770/800/810 until it was too late. Nokia had an app store when apple was still pushing "weblets" or whatever they called the web based apps. Pretty surprising from a big phone company. Then a microsoft exec took over, forced a migration to windows mobile, sold a bunch of phone, orphaned those phones, and brought a new generation of incompatible windows phones. Not to mention the famous burning barn memo. Pretty much the entire market dropped windows mobile. Similarly Balmer's microsoft lacked vision and was doubling down on windows laptops+desktops running microsoft office at the cost of mobile, at the cost of cloud, and a late start on web based apps. They did of course turn things around and started playing nice with others, offering cloud services, supporting linux and android, etc. Although I'm sure the Nokia backstory might be appreciated by casual readers of your comment who weren't aware, I suggest you read the parent's comment in good faith and realize that he's essentially arguing that Google currently is exhibiting a lack of vision similar to Nokia. In an attempt to take my own advise I'll simply note that it's unclear from your comment whether you're actually agreeing with the parent or trying to provide a counterargument of sorts. Did you try to develop for Symbian and push anything to their store? The experience was so terrible, that it was easier to build for a jailbroken iPhone, pre-appstore, than for Nokia. Nokia App Store - that was introduced a year after iPhone's App Store - https://www.datamation.com/mobile/nokia-unveils-online-app-s... . As for a user friendly GUI - you must be kidding here. Before iPhone, devs had to ship apps through web, or strike deals with mobile operators - which were crazily terrible - I remember a story of one operator who had a deal where they literally took all the money, and it was up to a developer to figure out their business model. As for Elop bringing in Windows Phone 7: my understanding was always that this was literally the reason he was brought over to Nokia -- because they were in such a deep hole. He was brought 3 years after the iPhone, when Nokia/Symbian was already on a downhill slope. At that time it was reported as a potentially saving move for both MS and Nokia, because their platforms were struggling - https://www.informationweek.com/it-leadership/nokia-to-embra... -- "In July, Nokia reported a 40% slump in second quarter profits, as it has struggled to maintain its lead in the booming smartphone market.
Mr Kallasvuo has been facing increasing pressure to quit this year after Nokia issued two profits warnings and its share price fell by more than 40% between March and June." As for the lack of vision though, I agree. And that is what's happening with Google right now. They are introducing AI chaotically left and right, and there is no serious vision behind it all. I expect Apple will show how it should be done, once again - but I may stand corrected after Monday's WWDC :) Well, as long as Google doesn't do something similarly stupid (like, say, announcing discontinuation of their search and suite or whatever and that they will offer a great new Bing/O365 integration experience in a year), they will be fine. Nokia did the „stupid” things only when their business was already collapsing due to Symbian, not the other way around. Took them around 4 years from iPhone’s premiere to get to that point. And I remember people saying that Symbian’s user base is too big to fail even weeks before the WP announcements and later up until the burning rig memo. Ditto Blackberry, although blackberry had a shorter history at that time. We will never know how it would have played out (and yeah, there were no small amounts of stupid things beforehand), but the actual collapse was induced by pouring gasoline on the burning platform. What else could they have done? Their Symbian efforts failed on every front, and their software engineering seemed broken to the core (looking at it from an outside engineer who tried building apps for Symbian, but also as a device user). It was a company that understood hardware/firmware like no other, but the software part was not there - kind of like car producers and their infotainment systems nowadays. > Google even pays Apple billions to be the default on their devices. ca 20 billions per year, just to keep their search engine as a default. https://untested.sonnet.io/Defaults+Matter%2C+Don't+Assume+C... I don't get it. People around me have been saying Google is shit for years now but I can't see it. I still reach for google for any minor query, and it's super responsive and it's super helpful. Yes of course I am aware that for certain queries you get a lot of results that have manipulated their way to the top. I just think I have a very good natural bullshit-filter. I don’t like the company and stopped using Google search over 5 years ago. I don’t miss it or even notice its absence. I have to remind myself Google is a massive part of many people’s experience of the internet. Which company is better? When it comes to that level of data and maturity I think there is no valid competition. I've consciously made the decision that I don't care what Google does with my data. They're going to attempt to track me regardless of if I use their services or not. I have friends who live off grid to get away from internet tracking but I don't envy their lifestyle. So I think like most conscious people we just make the decision to willingly hand over whatever data we might be leaking to these companies, just for the convenience. Life is short, and filled with enough suffering, I don't need to inflict it upon myself in my daily routines. Kagi is much better for multiple reasons IMO: 1. I pay them, so am not so much the product, from an economic perspective 2. The search results are actually better, for me at least, especially with the customisations it allows 3. They do claim to be free of ads/trackers and care about privacy 4. I see no evidence of them doing the bad things Google do 5. Even if they were just as bad, they are much smaller and it would make sense to me to give my money and attention to them over Google for that reason alone Like you, I'm a paid Kagi user. I also endorse all of the points you wrote above. However, there is the uncomfortable truth that Kagi relies on Google search results to power its own infra. Why does a single company have to be better? Fastmail or Migadu for mail, Kagi for search. I still use YT on a semi regular basis. Just because you’re used to using their products and it’s convenient to use them doesn’t mean there aren’t valid alternatives, or that using those equals “suffering”. That has to be the most first world rant I’ve seen in a while. I was looking for a new e-mail provider recently and migadu was a top candidate but I can't get over the fact that they price based on number of e-mails received. Isn't that easily exploited? Someone could potentially DoS your account. We're not that different on a daily basis. I use proton but I'm looking for a new less complicated provider so I can handle all e2ee myself. Posteo.de, migadu or fastmail. I still have my gmail, 20 years now, but it's mostly a spam trap for sign ups on popular services. I've tried some different search providers like DDG, not Kagi, but nothing compares to Google so far. And of course I use YT, Premium even because I don't have the energy to participate in the adblocking arms race. I think the biggest reason I'm still using mostly Google services is eID. Sweden depends a lot on eID and as far as I know it requires a stock Android phone to work. I've heard people getting it working without device integrity, but I just don't have the mental energy to deal with when it might stop working. My focus is on life, enjoying life, not fixing device issues. So therefore eID drives me to use stock google Android, and then it's just easier to use the rest of the Google ecosystem for calendar, notes, search and so forth. Migadu doesn’t have automated quotas. They are understanding and they won’t block your account because of one bad actor. Even if you go over the limits, they won’t say anything unless it becomes a regular pattern. I host email for quite a few people, and we’ve never even come close to the limits on my plan, and there’s some people who are very heavy email users. It's definitely crested and the downslope is just really long 1) How would you be able to detect that Google quality is slipping away? 2) There was a German research that it degraded [1]. I do not remember by how many percents it got worse, but how would you be able to tell that search engine is worse by 8% year by year? 3) Internet just got worse. There are walled gardens everywhere. Access to data has been more restricted for people who do not want to create accounts. Internet is not so tough for people who do not care about their privacy. It is not necessarily that Google search became worse 4) There always been spam, but it just got worse 5) Corporations are becoming more greedy. I have read about SEOs complaining that what has been previously not allowed, now is. Malvertising is more common 6) If Google focuses on big media companies, then small sites do not have revenue. Small sites are closed, and we have Internet without traffic for personal sites. Internet is getting boring if search focuses on big media companies. 7) Google is focusing on 'content', not on 'quality' content. Therefore what is 'new' is more important. Therefore you will be less likely to find a good article from 2011 8) Personal sites are hard to quantify. How would you be able that small domain with one good article is reliable? You don't. That is why Google prefers vice, or bbc news. It is just easier. There are more investor money there, etc. etc. 9) DYI projects, or game formus are tricky. They may contain Nintendo stuff, they may contain ROM files, or other untrustworthy comments. It is easier for search engines to ditch such sites altogether. 10) I am running a web crawler that indexes domains [2]. Let me assign you a task. Find interesting domains about "Amiga" using google search. How many domains you will find? I have more than 200 domains. Sure "Amiga" is a niche keyword, however that makes me wonder if I am just as inexperienced with Google search, or if Google in fact is a Potemkin Village for folks living in Matrix. Links: [1] https://mashable.com/article/google-search-low-quality-resea... > I just think I have a very good natural bullshit-filter. That's not really sufficient, though—there have been things I've searched for, and every result on the first few pages was bullshit. The problem was not that they weren't clearly bullshit, the problem was that there was no non-bullshit to find instead. At least, not buried deep in the bowels. When I'm just looking up a quick fact, I have a limit to how many worthless links I'm going to follow. But also: how "super responsive and [...] super helpful" is it being, if to get your information, you need to figure out when what it's giving you is a lie? "It gives me great information because I know when it's lying" doesn't seem very helpful, versus something that... y'know, doesn't send you to lies. That's great for you, but we used to not need as much bullshit-filter. Why does Google make me wade through easily filterable bullshit when it used to put the right results at the top? Reddit’s search is notoriously bad, so at least for now, there is still some value in searching Reddit via Google. It lends some credence to the idea that no matter how bad a service decays, it doesn’t matter if there is no better alternative. It can get worse and worse forever if competition doesn’t exist. You can also search Reddit via DuckDuckGo. It's the top search engine by a large margin and generates tens of billions of revenue. You can't declare something dead just because you notice a decline in it. Imagine that you killed the engine of a full load cargo train at full speed, is the train going to stop immediately? A Google query returns in <<500ms (for me anyways). Try that with your shiny LLM's. But it then takes you 10-20 min to find the information on the returned pages - unless you are looking for something very specific. Try Claude Haiku if not already. It is very fast and good enough in most cases. Exact comparison number does not matter as it takes me longer to read anyways. Anywhere near 500ms should be embarrassing I know. Right. Its not like they are searching any sort of volume. They completely lost the plot. Google search went from great to terrible to Ryanair check-in experience within a few years. Now they just killed traffic to a lot of independent websites in favour of a hundred or so generic superwebsites‘ slop. The internet is turning into just a dozen websites at an alarming speed. I think in the future we will have to spend more time on forums again to find what we need. I have taken an electronic music hobby recently and the small forum where users of my instrument congregate has been a refreshing throwback to the early 2000's, making me realize how much I had missed a sense of community on the megasites. I mean, when you look at the forums... Even forums for say, Pytorch are that Discuss hideosity. "Discuss" or "Discourse" ? Bleh. "Disgust" "just google it" If you are browsing with an ad-blocker you are not their target audience. Then Google may seem dead to you, but more accurately you are dead to Google. I give them 2-5 years. One thing is crappy search, but another is bad company culture. On the other hand, their AlphaFold effirts seem to have no real competition, so it would be funny if the whole company pivoted into biotech one day :D Still using Google Workspace in our company to collaborate and send/receive emails, still using Google Maps for recommendations and routes, still using a Google phone. I guess the answer is no. Are you usually an early or a late adopter of tech? I dont like the Reddit Search Engine, I use Google as a substitute. Reddit has the worst search functionality. Drives me mad. I use google to search for reddit content. If reddit search improves google will lose it's value even more. There are still no better alternatives, but the market is very ripe for some kind of new search paradigm. When it comes Google will lose it's share overnight. I think good content is now in video, tiktoks, shorts & reels.
Google is unable to show this in the rankings. > good content is now in tiktoks, shorts & reels lol https://google.com -site:reddit.com -site:amazon.com -site:ebay.com -site:etsy.com -site:facebook.com -site:*google.com Or just use uBlacklist to block certain sites in search results: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmia... You missed Pinterest :) Pinterest is dead. Might be dead but its spam in Google Images is alive and well Google's search of Reddit is better than Reddit's search of Reddit. Google AI search can also give you the information you're looking for directly without having to manually filter through a bunch of on page junk (ads, distracting UI, irrelevant content) > Google AI search can also give you the information you're looking for directly without having to manually filter It’s especially good when you need to find out the recommended amount of rocks to eat per day The reports of the death of google are greatly exaggerated. Definitely at the end of maturity, IMO > Ask HN: Is Google Dead? > Betteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." Google will remain dominant because of the ease of returning to something familiar. It is the same reason that MS is pushing OpenAI - once they become the familiar brand, people will stay there even if Anthropic blows them out of the water in terms of quality. All the more so here where Bing results (aka DDG etc) are comparable or worse for a large number of queries. It’s not a headline of an article though "Is Betteridge's Law Always Right?" no no ofc