Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/paul-graham-the-commons-and-how-google-stopped-being-google/254917/

by maxprogram • 14 years ago

139 103 14 years ago

theatlantic.com

willvarfar• 14 years ago

Its called "the filter bubble" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx525s

brudgers8• 14 years ago

>"They make changes to the user interface and collect more data, analyzing what they've got to see what users "liked" more."

I find this so utterly naive that I am incredulous.

Google is a business. They don't tweek results based in favor of user preferences.

They tweek results based on the amount of revenue they are likely to bring in.

It's not an accident that [in the US] http://www.google.com/search?q=weather provides top links to commercial advertizing driven sites for one's local weather and only portals into the main page of weather.gov rather than the local forecast page.

Google search results aren't the best possible for the most people. They are the worst tolerable for maximizing revenue.

[edit] do employees have to use 20% time for downvoting on HN or is it part of their job?

bambax3• 14 years ago

Either you didn't read the article or you didn't understand it. The author doesn't complain that Google search results aren't "the best possible for the most people"--au contraire!

He complains they're not the same, that if you search from a given location or being in a given demographic you will get different results than other people, and that this fact erodes the trust users have in Google: how do I know if this set of results is the absolute best on a given topic or if Google is simply showing to me what it "thinks" I will like?

brudgers8• 14 years ago

It isn't showing you what it thinks you will like at all.

It is showing you the most amount of pertinent advertising that it thinks you will tolerate while promoting sites containing similar advertising as high up the page rank as it thinks you will tolerate.

All those links to your G+ friends are promoted to keep you on Google's properties where they can make the most money when you click on an advertising link - think of Google like a DisneyWorld's Magic Kingdom and G+ like Downtown Disney.

moultano5• 14 years ago

"They tweek results based on the amount of revenue they are likely to bring in."

This is entirely false, and I wish misinformed people would stop parroting it. There's an extremely rigid firewall between the ad side of the company and the search side. People working on search don't even see metrics on how their changes effect ads, let alone make decisions based on them.

When I want change the way ranking works, there's a big stack of statistics I have to collect. None of them involve ads. All of them involve how useful the results are to a user.

brudgers8• 14 years ago

I'll believe it when someone can explain why a search for "weather" returns the results it does.

The Weather channel utilizes Google search.

The Weather Underground...well name a Google service they could use and don't.

Accuweather provides plausible deniablity.

On the other hand, weather.gov employs some of the best meteorologists anywhere, provides the official hazardous weather warnings the other sites rely on, and has a wonderfully informative hourly weather graph for any given location.

In other words, Google doesn't provide the most relevant results first when it comes to local weather in the US, it provides the most profitable.

But I'm willing to read your statistical explanation for why this is so. Go ahead and make your case.

Be sure to explain how the special format for the weather page is based on statistical data and not hard coded.

bambax3• 14 years ago

The author is prompt to admit that this is pure speculation on his part, and so we don't know how and why Google became what it is; but I find his explanation very convincing.

Serving personalized results to users may increase click-through rates but it degrades the idea we form of what Google is and what it does.

indiecore• 14 years ago

The problem of course is that what Google actually IS and what people THINK Google is are two completely different things. Google is an ad company, always remember that.

bambax3• 14 years ago

The argument that "it's a business" is weak and not very helpful.

Google makes its money from advertising, but in order for it to place ads it needs to serve relevant results; serving "tailored" results because they generate more clicks is short-sighted (well, that's the argument anyway). If people become so distrustful of Google that they stop using it, and use a combination of DDG or Wolfram Alpha for example, then there will be no more ads for Google to serve.

We're admittedly very far from this, but the fact that high-profile people such as PG start to complain about it publicly (and not just old anonymous grumps like me) should make Google think.

We'll see.

stanleydrew2• 14 years ago

Google is not an ad company. People just like to say that because they think it's clever or surprising or something. Google does not produce ads. They sell ad space. So does Facebook. So does NBC. These are product companies selling ad space.

vibrunazo• 14 years ago

> Serving personalized results to users may increase click-through rates but it degrades the idea we form of what Google is and what it does.

If it serves me better results, then how so?

yew2• 14 years ago

Better can mean 'more liked' and 'more accurate' which are not necessarily equivalent. Accuracy being something of a fuzzy category, of course.

falling• 14 years ago

Here’s how: http://dontbubble.us

I always thought that search personalization was of course better, until that page made me think about the downsides.

eli_gottlieb• 14 years ago

Who says it serves you better results? If I type in "tea", am I searching for Tealuxe in Harvard Square or am I searching for the botanical and scientific material on a common drink or am I searching for recipes? The new "social+local" Google biases my results towards the former.

A search engine used to be a tool for reaching out into the world and finding something new. Now it searches through what I already know? What's the point in that?

disgruntledphd2• 14 years ago

This is a really good article. Succint, reasonably well written and interesting. That being said, one imagines that Google (despite being an advertising company) have a huge investment in the quality of search.

However, because they are essentially a monopoly, many people try to game the system for their benefit. This creates an arms-race, and may be one of the root causes of this personalisation. I do agree with the main point, that this could potentially make Google less useful for us all as a whole, and will probably lead to their disruption, sooner or later.

robrenaud• 14 years ago

> It isn't that anymore, though. Searches are geospecific and social network-dependent. All of which is fine and useful, but that's not what made us love Google's search engine.

What makes you love Google is Google giving you the right answer.

If you live in the US, do a google search for dmv.

Did it pull the one from your state?

Do you really want an averaged across all searchers answer? California is probably the state the generates the most Google searches for dmv, but the California DMV is likely relevant iff you are in California.

This idea of one best search page for one query, independent of any other factors based on the user or users geography is really overly romantic and simplicistic.

On the other hand, the filter bubble stuff is a nice narrative, but it mostly makes for an interesting story rather than real problem. Having worked on search personalization at Google about 5 years ago, it's just hard to make that big impact on search results with personalization. "dmv" is a nice example where it's works brilliantly, but those ambiguous queries are pretty rare, and hence the more bread and butter stuff is still really driving most of the quality.

drhayes9• 14 years ago

A little off-topic, but...

Why is this getting down-voted? Is it because you disagree with what this person is saying? I thought down-votes were only for things that didn't contribute to the conversation.

It feels like this is getting down-voted because people don't like that Google is doing these things. So, this person is getting down-voted 'cuz of Google? Huh?

joering2• 14 years ago

> I thought down-votes were only for things that didn't contribute to the conversation.

yeah, well.. you need to see my posts on Apple threads.

lkrubner• 14 years ago

Sadly, Paul Graham has endorsed the idea of using the downvote to express disagreement. I personally dislike this use of the downvote, but it does have official sanction. Read this:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

Dylan16807• 14 years ago

Some people might have downvoted based on the DMV example apparently being wrong. Factual inaccuracy can be a good reason to downvote.

dakotasmith• 14 years ago

Logged in, and in Texas, my search for 'dmv' returns the California DMV.

Then New York.

Then Virginia.

The only results for Texas DMV are two ads at the top of the result listing for sketchy drivers-license.org type "businesses".

antoko2• 14 years ago

hmm that might be because we don't use the DMV here in Texas the same way - TxDOT and TxDPS are the two agencies you're going to interface with to handle the stuff that California's DMV does.

I've been in TX 5 years now (and owned a car that whole time) and never even knew we had a department of motor vehicles.

drats• 14 years ago

That's ok until Google infects a current search with a previous search as it seemed to do for me the other day. In some cases that might help, and although they were in the same domain I was actually looking for something else. Maybe it was an accident, but the result (at position 3 or 4) looked very much like it'd been boosted from my search a minute earlier. Anyone else experience this?

JoshTriplett• 14 years ago

> If you live in the US, do a google search for dmv.

First of all, no, it doesn't give me the DMV for my state first.

And second, why would I do that when I can easily search for "$statename dmv" and have that search universally do the right thing regardless of location? I don't want hidden inputs to my search based on my location; I want everything that determines the results encapsulated in the query.

loganfrederick• 14 years ago

I think this debate hits at an important point; different people want different things. Some people would find it easier to type "dmv" and have the engine know they want "dmv open right now and closest to my location". Some people, like you, want the search engine to handle your input without external influences.

In the end, it might be optimal for the world to have multiple, specialized search engines/apps to please as many wants as possible.

pbreit• 14 years ago

I think you have to be pretty technical to dislike hidden inputs. But hidden inputs generally please mere mortals.

DanBC3• 14 years ago

You are not the typical user that Google is aiming for. I find the unasked for word substitutions and stemming and "corrections" and the bubble frustrating, but I recognise that I'm an edge case. Google really should have some kind of "what you type is what you get" mode, with user-definable stemming and word substitution and bubbles and etc.

(http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/search-using-your...)

> we found that users typed the “+” operator in less than half a percent of all searches, and two thirds of the time, it was used incorrectly.

Check my arithmetic but that means only 1 in 600 searches used + correctly; 2 in 600 used it wrong, and the other 597 searches didn't use it at all.

0.5% == 3 in 600 2/3 == 66% = 2 in 3 are wrong

replax• 14 years ago

I could not agree more.

That becomes even more frustrating when you (temporarily) are in another country and suddenly get smacked in your face by incorrect location based search results. If google wants to really retain traction with people who want to search for what they type (don't even get me started on the "showing results for: $bshere, if you want to see results for what you searched for, click here"), then they will soon have to provide a switch for it.

I really hope that google goes that way but I think it only crop up when people working at google find themselves using a different search engine to find (esp. programming related) specific topics.

bthomas• 14 years ago

I'd prefer the local DMV be a special result, clearly separate from the universal search. See how "current time" gives you a special result on top - I think they could give similar treatment to a link.

More generally, I think users appreciate when recommendations are transparent. Amazon and netflix are great about this - users get to implicitly choose when they want "recommended for you" or just basic results. I'd like Google search more if it had the same model.

tlogan• 14 years ago

I was expecting that DMV is shown as special result on top - something like "are you searching for DMV office next to your location?" ...

But you explained the core of the problem. There are two kinds of searches:

1) discovery of information

2) finding information I probably know but I'm just too lazy to go that site directly (or something in that sense)

The first kind of search is what made Google the most popular search engine. The second kind of search is something new for Google and it seems it is implemented as a unsophisticated simplification of the complex problem. It is like AOL search all over again.

spc4762• 14 years ago

I did a Google search for "dmv". The first result, an ad, is for Florida, where I live. The next three non-ad based results are for California, Virginia and New York. The fourth (and on) non-ad results are for Florida.

A Google search for "florida dmv" returned Florida-based results.

What I am tired of seeing are Eames chair ads all over the place. Do one search for Eames chairs, and click on one paid result, and now all I see are Eames chair ads. Sigh.

At least it's a break from the casino school ads I was getting.

loverobots2• 14 years ago

The first result, an ad, is for Florida, where I live. The next three non-ad based results are for California, Virginia and New York. The fourth (and on) non-ad results are for Florida.

So you click on the relevant link ("happened" to be an ad,) as the Stanford MBAs high five each other at Googleplex. I remember reading a very interesting comment about the incentives of providing the best results and ad revenue. It's clear to me that ad revenue has been winning at Google.

keltex• 14 years ago

This is called google "remarketing". Basically what happened is when you visited the Eames chair site, you received a remarketing cookie.

Then when you visit other google properties, google automatically gives you ads from that Eames chair site.

http://www.google.com/ads/innovations/remarketing.html

hrktb• 14 years ago

Two points.

> it's just hard to make that big impact on search results with personalization

Trying to make a big impact on something that was more or less working might be the problem. A "don't fix what's not (too) broken" could be a good idea.

For your dmv example, actually, I din't know what dmv is, and my fisrt page (french localized) is about a medicament dictionnary for doctors (DMV, didn't know it either).

"dmv usa" doesn't get me the dmvusa.org result firt either (it's the one I get on the US google)

This seems to be the best example of why geospecific data can be widly irrelevant, and using the default setting, I get this kind of unusable results for half of what I search.

brudgers8• 14 years ago

>Do you really want an averaged across all searchers answer? California is probably the state the generates the most Google searches for dmv, but the California DMV is likely relevant iff you are in California."

My state has a Motor Vehicle Division.

"DMV" gives me California's.

This page which does not appear on Google's first page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMV - though perhaps it should.

tripzilch4• 14 years ago

> What makes you love Google is Google giving you the right answer.

No it's not. What I loved about Google is giving me the ability to search the web. If my answer wasn't on the first page (or even the second), I'd refine my query until I would get it. Which was easy because Google was very deterministic, just your basic "AND" keyword search engine. Try a few synonyms maybe, different angle, synecdochical approach[1] and if all that didn't get you your answer, it probably wasn't there[2].

Today, you type in your query, Google tries to guess what you need, and shows you your results. If your answer is not there, you can try different queries, synonyms, whatever, but you'll get mostly the same results again. The web being unimaginably bigger than 10 years ago when I used the approach described above, I refuse to believe my answer's not there. Google is just being dumb.

Anyone know of a proper Search Engine? (I love Duck Duck Go but its index is rather small)

[1]http://www.searchlores.org/synecdoc.htm

[2]actually, you were probably not trying hard enough. Pressing on over the course of a week and getting some expert friends to help you would always show that your answer was in fact there. in some form or another.

rieter• 14 years ago

Try the literal search feature on Google.

raldi• 14 years ago

Do you have an example of a search that doesn't currently find good results, but you suspect it would work if Google worked the way it used to?

stephengoodwin2• 14 years ago

I agree Google has gone into a filter bubble, but the article very speculative and provides no statistics or examples to make a good point.

This is a pop-science article, so I don't have high expectations.

moultano5• 14 years ago

Why do you agree then that Google has gone into a filter bubble?

stephengoodwin2• 14 years ago

Based on various other articles I've read. I would not go to an extreme and say "this is a terrible idea," but I would assert it's worthy of serious thought on how to ensure we are not limiting ourselves to the filter we've built.

Nonetheless, my criticism was directed at this article for not providing at least a few examples of the results of a filter bubble.

skmurphy• 14 years ago

Alexis Madrigal reaches a subtle and thought provoking conclusion "The aggregation of individual data does not a commons make." This would seem to be at odds with a lot of "Big Data" evangelism but I think he is right.

stfu• 14 years ago

What I find fascinating is that with the sheer unlimited amount of data they have the quality of their search engine results have been stagnating for almost 10 years and no substantial break through been seen so far.

The only somewhat "break through" could be seen in local searches - and saving people from adding their zip code, city or street name to their search phrase seems to be not that much impressive either.

davemel372• 14 years ago

this is really interesting. What People WANT and what they THINK they want are two different things...How people define and Perceive SEARCH and how they use search are two different things.

I think Google is facing a SELF-DEFEATING reality that as they serve people with better results, they erode the perception of their brand in peoples eyes.

There is clearly an incongruity between what people "THINK" they want from a search engine( and how they perceive Google) versus, what they "REALLY WANT" from a search engine.

Conflicting priorities are always a struggle, but this is an especially interesting one. One side has a DATA supported reality that can't be disputed about what searchers want and what puts bread on the table. On the other side is the more important, but less quantifiable reality that their BRAND is what brings searches back to the site, not the quality of the results, but the perception of GOOGLE and SEARCH being synonymous. This brand value is clearly getting diluted by delivering better results, and could in the long run be their demise.

davemel372• 14 years ago

I almost wonder if SEARCH by definition can't and shouldn't be the end answer, but rather the journey to discovering new things and finding answers.

Google is assuming that when people search, they want answers, but maybe what they really want is to SEARCH for answers.

darklajid• 14 years ago

The problem with the approach Google is taking, the reason why I 'left': I felt that it became harder and harder to actually get what I want (using your caps: WANT). I know it. No, you don't know better. No, I didn't misspell that, no geolocation is a bad idea for results or - worse - language.

It's a mediocre service now. Became big with search, became worthless for searches for me. I cannot search anymore, I can play games with software that tries to second guess my intentions.

modeless• 14 years ago

This is more insightful than the article. The problem isn't optimizing for the "community" as the article seems to think. The problem really is that what people think they want and what they actually want are opposed. Facebook faces the same problem.

I think the unfortunate endgame here is legislation that will require what people think they want (e.g. privacy, absolute control) at the expense of some things they actually want (e.g. frictionless social interaction, simplicity).

(To forestall some argument: Yes, I realize that privacy/social interaction and control/simplicity are not always mutually exclusive. However, there are cases where they interfere with each other, which requires compromise.)

yanw• 14 years ago

At first search signals were mainly provided by the content itself and now signals from the user are being incorporated.

There is already an established term for this and it’s not “filter bubble” or “tailoring” the term is “relevance” and it’s the core of search.

If the author is suggesting that data about a user’s identity, history, and location isn't usefully to providing her with the best possible results then he should stick to writing about stuff he actually comprehends and not be the umpteenth author resorting to use “Google” in the title to whore traffic.

PaulMcCartney• 14 years ago

It's nice to romanticize what Google might've once been, but at the end of the day Google is a tool that provides a service. To have a qualm regarding the current user experience is a different story, but in terms of the delivery of sought after content I don't think one could argue they have taken steps anywhere but forwards.

laconian• 14 years ago

This article is custom tailored for the HN echo chamber. The link to PG for this article is tenuous at best.

qeorge• 14 years ago

It reminds me of HN itself.

I don't want to know what the "average" likes to read, or even what people like me like to read. I want to know what smart, interesting people (not me!) like to read.

In other words: I want curation by an expert, not the average of everyone's inputs. Google is supposed to know the right answer, not ask all my friends what the answer is and report back.

gxs• 14 years ago

I completely agree with you on this topic. In a similar vein, I don't want to read the average Joe's take on why he loves the iPad 3 so much (I usually abstain from commenting, though lately I've said what the hey) - I want to hear what smart, more enlightened people have to say. That was the real value of HN for me when I first got on years ago. It was hearing from people like patio11 when the topic of SEO came up.

The thread recently where Jordan Mendelson (napster hacker) chimed regarding Napster's back end is the quintessential example of what I'm talking about.

nextstep• 14 years ago

Does anyone know an easy way to prevent Google from tailoring my search results based off my location? I don't want to use a proxy, because then the results would just be tailored to that (false) location.

EventHorizon• 14 years ago

More Search Tools : Verbatim?

mtrimpe• 14 years ago

I know pws=0 works for turning off personalized search.

chanderson0• 14 years ago

The "personalization" of the web is not a Google-specific phenomenon. I am, at this very moment, sitting in a session at the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit where a marketer from Toyota is espousing personalizing site content to users.

This practice is being pushed _hard_ to all businesses here as a central theme of growth of the internet. In the sense that this drives better business, it certainly will be. Don't expect to go to Toyota.com and see the same experience as your neighbor anymore.

gfaremil• 14 years ago

Discovery and personalization are not compatible with each other. So if you use Google search as a discovery tool, then personalization hurts.

There is no alternative. Maybe DDG but results are not so good.

mladenkovacevic2• 14 years ago

I feel like there's a recent anti-Google sentiment among the hacker/techie community which seems very unsubstantiated by solid reasoning or logic. The argument in particular, that search quality is getting worse, is a little lost on me because, for me or anyone I talk to at least, this is simply not true.

In fact, I find myself spending less and less time on "Google the Search Engine" because it's gotten so damn good at giving me the right result right away based on the simplest and vaguest keywords (I use the omnibar so I don't even go to google.com anymore). I still remember not so long ago having to try different phrasings of my search keywords a number of times before I would get the result I was looking for on the main page (or in cases of extreme frustration clicking through pages and pages of search results). This is largely not the case anymore.

From my general interactions with people and how they use the web, anecdotal as it may be, they simply doesn't give a shit about ads, filter bubbles and so on. Google Search hasn't changed for them in any meaningful way except that it's gotten a lot better at figuring out what they wanted to find (and in most cases they are not even conscious of that improvement over time).

With regards to other other free G-services (Gmail, Docs, G+, Blogger, YouTube), if you are consciously buying into them, it is implied that you know you are entering into a relationship where parts of the real-estate you're interacting with might be used to display ads and I think everyone understands and accepts that.

I am an avid conspiracy theorist, however, and have more long-term concerns about what happens if Google turns TRULY evil and starts to use its data to spy on citizens on behalf of some authoritarian government. But as of right now I feel a little foolish reacting to this concern in any significant way.

bartwe• 14 years ago

For me the feeling of reduced quality is that when i don't find the answer on the first page, that i have less luck with additional keywords and more pages then i think i used to have. These queries are mostly trying to cast a wide net with some errorcodes or stacktraces and seeing if others reported similar problems.

JBiserkov• 14 years ago

I personally have to modes:

1. I already know what I'm looking for: a particular website, post, comment, the lyrics of a song that I know a part of.

2. I have a question, I don't know the answer, but I'll recognize it when I see it.

In my experience Google is getting better at type 1 '(re)discovery/popularity' search and worse at type 2 'exploratory/specificity' search. Depending on the ratio of type 1 vs type 2 in your search habits, Google results will get better/worse for you.

They introduced Verbatim search to solve the specifity problem, but in my experience it hardly ever works :(

molf2• 14 years ago

I have stopped using Google Search entirely very recently. The main reason is that Google too often misinterprets my search queries, and I got tired of typing quotes around the search terms.

I should stress that like any software developer (or any power user, probably), my queries tend to be very specific. I'm looking for particular information (which may or may not exist) that takes more than a couple of words to describe. It is with these queries that all too often Google simply decides that I meant something else and replaces one or two words with what it has decided are synonyms. Except they aren't.

Unfortunately I have not documented all these queries (I should have). But to give some examples, it would not be the first time that Google misinterprets a specific query about "sqlite" and only returns results related to SQL Server. Or it decides that a "scapegoat tree" is equivalent to an "AVL tree". They aren't synonyms. The results are actually worse than irrelevant.

It's like typing a query such as "honda brake problems" and getting results that are about "toyota brake problems". Yes, both are Japanese car manufacturers, but they are really not equivalent.

Of course correcting typing errors and searching for synonyms is useful. But I'd like to have control over that behaviour, and most of all: I want to understand what the search engine does. The best interfaces are those where a user can develop a mental model that helps them interact with it. It seems I'm no longer able to create a mental model for how Google works.

mladenkovacevic2• 14 years ago

> "The main reason is that Google too often misinterprets my search queries, and I got tired of typing quotes around the search terms. I should stress that like any software developer (or any power user, probably), my queries tend to be very specific."

So who do you think should invest the extra effort into performing searches (aka adding quotations.. or "taking them off"): the hackers with specific, but edge-case search requirements, or the 99% of casual users who just want to learn about "how do helycopters fly"

P.S. I tried both the sqlite and the scapegoat tree searches without the quotes and Google seemed to "know" what I meant... but if you encountered that problem perhaps it's an algorithm that unnecessarily "kicks in" depending on some other circumstances of the search. I would definitely classify this as a problem, but one that should again be easily solved with the use of quotation marks

DanBC3• 14 years ago

For me there are two problems.

1) Google focuses more on commercial sites, especially branded sites, than research or personal sites.

2) Sturgeon's law (90% of everything is garbage) and a much bigger world wide web means that there's a lot more garbage indexed, and returned, by Google searches.

I remember that I'd try a search phrase, and I'd be taken to some Web 1.2 site with black text on a grey background; some university professor or doctor would have written a really interesting article and linked to other sites or research. Now I get some reputable site selling stuff, or a bunch of shitty link farms offering me god-awful "reviews", or awful awful blogs.

I remember when search terms would return less than a gajillion hits; you could tell by the extra 'o' in Goooogle how many hits you'd got. When was the last time GoogleWhacking was possible? A result of "zero hits" is important. It doesn't mean the search failed and that Google should feel free to substitute words and try different stemming and remove the quotes. "Zero hits" information for me.

I strongly agree that I'm an edge case, and that Google is great for most people.

toddnessa• 14 years ago

The article points out reasons as to why many of us are leaving Google for other search engines that protect our private data by not recording our search information. Startpage for instance does not track your private data. You will not have your IP address recorded or have tracking cookies put on your computer. I know we now live in a world where it is difficult to get away from Google altogether. It seems like they want to collect data on everybody in various ways. However, many of us are beginning to try. My gmail account may be the next to go.

6ren• 14 years ago

The Dr. Frankenstein in me loves the idea of an automated data-driven business: generic algorithm + A-B testing + payment mechanism. If you could also automate litigation... running many in parallel, a useful monster might one day emerge. Evolution has worked well elsewhere. The real problem is an exponential search space, and time/experiments needed to explore it.

The problem of giving people what they want is also the problem of markets and democracy in general. Fortunately for us buyers/citizens, we usually eventually realize what we really want - unfortunately for the vendor/politician catering to what we previously thought we wanted.

There's an appeal to Jobs' approach: make what they will want once they've see it. Far superior to creating/governing by numbers.

jroseattle• 14 years ago

With the "old" Google, a search made me feel as though I'd stepped into the potential realm of answers to my query. The most relevant, to me, was the stuff that mapped to my query the best -- nothing more, but nothing less.

Now, I feel like I'm living in the law of averages. I'm not interested in the average; I want the top of the scale. I really do not want social and local and all the other unknown contexts involved in giving me what's right "for me". With all the contextual crap, I feel like now I get the "less".

I wish they let me have the option of turning it all off, and just going with content-based search. Of course, they have to filter out the crap that's being generated to game their search index, but outside of that -- give me what the web has.

amorphid• 14 years ago

You can get the unpersonalized version when needed. Simply log out of your Google account. Yoi can use a different browser, too.

Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google

Related Stories