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by TACIXAT 3401 days ago
This is great. I feel Google has slowly become too user friendly. My mobile results are always way less technical than my desktop results. If I'm in the car (passenger) and want to look up a problem I'm having while programming, I get mostly related queries that are a simplified version of what I'm looking for.

I really believe that the technical crowd drives what becomes popular (app recommendations for family and friends). I feel a lot of the "Google hacking" queries have become less obvious and the search bubble stuff was getting bothersome. This is definitely a step in the right direction. Hopefully I'll be a little less frustrated with results in the future.
2 comments
johnfn 3401 days ago
Google tailors its results to the kind of person it thinks you are. For example, if you immediately search "python", you will get results about snakes. But if you search for programming first, and then python second, it will now give back programming results on the second search. This continues to apply if you searched "programming" last week.

This behavior is actually very nuanced and impressive to watch, once you understand what's going on.

I don't think google is becoming more user friendly at the expense of being technical. It certainly isn't for me. What your problem sounds like is that it's built two separate profiles for you - one of which is what you're likely to search of desktop, and the other for what you're likely to search on mobile.

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trishume 3401 days ago
That specific example isn't actually true. Even with no prior history if you search "python" the first result is the programming language.

That's because Google is smart and despite the fact that more people know of Python as a snake, when somebody types just "python" into a search query, it's almost definitely true that they mean the programming language. Few people Google for types of snakes.

A similar thing is true for "ruby" and "rust".

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zitterbewegung 3401 days ago
I don't think the term user friendly is the right term. More like they have been targeting a different user over the years (also the content on the web has exploded).

Although most of the time Google will give me technical results if I can coax it.

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