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by mjal 2909 days ago
If it helps, you can click Tools on the right under the search bar on the results page and click Verbatim. I've found that I tend to get better results when I'm looking for something specific.
1 comments

This three click ritual that I have to do on probably 75% of my searches and 99% of my conscious searches reminds me on the 90s when I would have to inconveniently cntrl+alt+del on windows very frequently.

It’s an example of how google is getting more anti user. They obviously have data on this feature usage. They make a bit of a pain and don’t make it a user preference. I fear this means it’s one of the myriad of little features that developers put in that are eventually de supported.

I imagine the following scenario in a design meeting:

PM: SO THE NEW FEATURE IS AMAZING, WE WILL SHOW USERS THE MOST LIKELY RESULTS THAT THEY WANT TO SEE. AND THIS LEADS TO MORE AD CLICKS.

DEV: BUT WHAT ABOUT WHEN IT DOESNT EVEN HAVE WORDS FROM THE SEARCH?

PM: THATS NOT AN ISSUE, OUR ALGORITHM SHOWS THAT 80% OF OUR USERS CLICK ON THESE RESULTS

DEV: HOW WILL I SEARCH STACKOVERFLOW? HOW ABOUT I ADD AN OPTION TO JUST USE THE EXACT TEXT?

PM: WE HAVE TO FOCUS ON SCOPE, CANT WASTE TIME ON BONUS FEATURES

DEV: ITS NOT A BONUS FEATURE ITS HOW SEARCH WORKS BEFORE YOUR CHANGE. IT TAKES 30 SECONDS.

PM: WELL EXACT SEARCH MAKES US LESS AD REVENUE

DEV: ITS REALLY USEFUL

PM: OK MAKE IT HARD TO GET TO SO USERS DONT GET CONFUSED

DEV: OK, AND ILL MAKE A SETTING SO ITS NOT THAT BIG OF A DEAL

PM: NO SETTING THAT WOULD BE A COMMITMENT TO KEEP THE FEATURE

<dec shudders thinking of how she will be hated my millions of users who are inconvenienced, wonders where her life has gone, dreams of a better world, starts typing...curtain>

Could you please not use allcaps for emphasis in HN comments? It's basically yelling.

This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

I dislike this meme of thinking that PMs are all useless and devs are the only sane people in product development.