zlacker

>>i13e+(OP)
I don't get the HN hate of Google as a search tool. Yes, SEO has made searching more difficult, but Google is still by far the best search engine provided that your searches are focused and you use search tools (e.g., excluding terms, focusing on certain sites, etc.). I've tried other search engines (e.g., DDG, Bing) and they just aren't as good as Google.

>>saudad+3c
Many of the HN crowd remember when Google came into existence and how wonderful it was.

If it existed on the internet, Google would find it for you and it was usually the top resault. It was amazing.

Today, it's a shadow of its former self.

You regularly have to search, wade through the ads that are written like informative articles, adjust your query slightly and repeat the process. It's rubbish.

>>rantin+2f
What these people are remembering is when the web was small and dorks-only. Now it is huge and full of normies of all kinds, including every shade of commercialism and fraud.

>>jeffbe+5h
Incorrect, the web was mainstream by 1996, two years before Google even launched.

>>pirate+zh
The number of internet users is currently 150x more than it was in 1996. I don't think you can make an argument that it was already mainstream in '96 with a few tens of millions of people on it.

The web was overwhelmingly informational up to an inflection point where it became overwhelmingly commercial. That's the thing people are upset about.

>>jeffbe+ti
This is absolutely right. The web died about then, really. What we have now is shameful and embarrassing, and society is poorer for it.

And it's not Google's fault.

But it also remains true that Google's search just doesn't work well for many people, and that some alternatives work better for them.