[chris_f]

A few corrections:

The + (formerly used to force a term to be present in the result) and ~ (also find synonyms) operators have been deprecated.

Google now advises to wrap the word in quotes instead of using the +. Google will also automatically look for synonyms without the use of ~.

I have seen 'AROUND(n)' mentioned in many other places working as a proximity operator in Google, but I don't believe that is true and haven't found it to work in any logical way.

Also the use of parentheses to nest queries is not necessary in Google. It is actually required for Bing on complicated queries though.

[GordonS]

Worth mentioning that even if you put a term in double quotes, Google still tries to be too clever - you are not guaranteed to get results that contain your quotes search term :/

[devjungle]

This must be a recent change? It's been driving me nuts lately. I have to resort to adding a lot of negated search terms to compensate but it's still sub optimal.

[GordonS]

No, this has been the case for a long time, years anyway. I don't know if it goes back quite as far as when they removed the '+' operator tho.

But bejesus, this drives me nuts! If I know the double quotes function even exists, then Google should know I actually want to use it as intended - it shouldn't decide "yeah, but maybe you'd like these irrelevant results too!"

[jon_richards]

I think it’s primarily for people copying and pasting something like an error message, which may have user-specific data in quotes. That should be what “not many results for...” is for, but Google is always trying to optimize away those clicks. Maybe they could add a “programatic” search feature with documented syntax for power users.

[hwillis]

A moderate-length string of quoted words (>5?) used to return zero or near zero results and a suggestion to try without quotes- imo ideal

[echelon]

Power users aren't where the money is.

[mcswell]

Maybe they should go back to +

[hoseja]

Add? They used to have one and actively removed it.

[rozab]

I am always surprised that these systems are not more friendly to engineers, since they were built by them. You'd think for their own sakes they'd stick in a system like xkcd.com/806/

[b112]

Use 'verbatim'. It's a drop down option, and it isn't as good as the old + or other operators (deprecated because of Google Plus). For example, with verbatim you can't only + one single thing in a search.

Regardless, I basically just always search with verbatim on. Google is mostly useless otherwise.

[librarianscott]

Thank you. I quickly changed my default Chrome search to https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&tbs=li:1 instead of regular Google

[JasonFruit]

It seems to me that after a few negated search terms are included, they are taken less strictly; "minus" seems to mean "probably minus".

[nostromo]

And even if that exact term is present on popular websites, like Stack Overflow, Google still seems to have trouble finding those exact results regularly.

[solarist]

As a workaround and under search tools one can enable the “verbatim” option.

[jlokier]

I was under the impression "verbatim" is to disable filter-bubble personalisation.

Normal queries are tailored to your personal filter bubble. You can't see what other people see from same search, and if you're doing SEO or just trying to find who tends to come top in results for something you have a lot of history looking at, you can't tell who comes top for other people.

[eitland]

Verbatim doesn't work consistently: often it helps a bit, often it gets ignored it seems.

[GordonS]

AFAICT, the verbatim option gives the same results as if I'd quoted my search term?

[solarist]

In my experience it depends on the number of results, and the results are more accurate with verbatim.

[aspenmayer]

It’s like being able to touch your nose in the dark, or even having been blind since birth.

Verbatim searches are for those easy tasks when you know literally, exactly, what you’re looking for.

Something tells me that a lot of folks on HN are being let down by Google in this area. I don’t mean it in a bad way, I want to identify these issues to help everyone. I wish the UI of search wasn’t so textually-bound.

Is there such a thing as an augmented reality search engine? You search like you do at the library, or when you lost your keys. But for data and virtual objects, they lose out - their evanescence creates a perception gap. There is no correspondence with physical objects, etc. We are getting better with haptics, however.

Rainbows End[0] is a future society I’d choose to live in, especially right about now.

Anyone have any good book recommendations?

[0] Vernor Vinge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End

[twelvechairs]

I think you use 'intext:"search term"' now don't you? Unless that has changed now too

[cel1ne]

Yes, just put a + in front of the double-quotes and you get what you want.

[Razengan]

Google has been gradually becoming useless for anything but the most basic/popular terms, over the last few years.

Just now I had to give up trying to look up "the term for fans that are paid actors" and variations.

Asking on Reddit or Stack Overflow would be faster than Google's search engine for some things now.

[mehrdadn]

The plus operator in the page appears to be binary rather than unary. I've never used it. Is that affected as well? (Though I'm confused why AND is necessary. Isn't it implied normally?)

[chris_f]

That is correct. AND is added by default and is never necessary in Google.

It's a little confusing because fo how Google implemented some of the operators. The boolean + operator in many cases is used in the same way as AND, but Google originally used it to let users to force a specific word to be present in a search result.

So a search for Fish +Chips was a search for both words, but 'Chips' MUST be present. The equivalent search today is Fish "Chips". It's a little annoying because it requires typing another character, and it it is still not always respected.

[mcswell]

I think the default is more like AND/OR. If AND were the default, and I put a list of five words in without any 'AND' or 'OR', then I'd expect to get only pages that have all 5 of those words. Now of course google looks for synonyms, unless you put quotes around each search term (which ostensibly blocks synonyms, although as you and others mention, this doesn't always work). But afaict, returned pages don't even necessarily have synonyms for all five search terms. That's especially true for words that don't have much semantic content, but it seems to be true even for very specific words. And that's more like OR.

[abarrettwilsdon]

Updated the article to reflect and credited you for the contribution!

[EE84M3i]

When you say "deprecated", you mean as in "discontinued" right? Not just like, discouraged?

[flywheel]

Whoever the first developer was that used "deprecated" got it kind of wrong, the word should have been "depreciated".

Deprecate: "express disapproval of."

Depreciate: "diminish in value over a period of time."

I kind of cringe when other developers say "deprecated".

Edit: Versioning and not removing APIs is kind of the way to go, so you don't break client apps that possibly can't be updated easily or at all. "Depreciated" is a far better word to use with a far better outcome. AWS versions their APIs, they don't remove old ones. "I disapprove of using this API and we're taking it away at some random date" vs "this isn't the latest API, use the current one for new development" seems like a pretty stark difference in thinking to me. YMMV.

[jrochkind1]

Nope.

It is deprecated -- it's use is disapproved of, you should stop using it. In the future it will go away but for now it works, so you can use it, but its use is discouraged.

Depreciated doesn't make any sense -- the value of the deprecated API does not diminish over time. It works, until it stops working. It's on or off. It doesn't work less and less every month or anything. It currently still works completely, but is deprecated -- that is, discouraged. At some point in the future, it will stop working, completely.

the rest of us don't just kind of but REALLY cringe when people say "depreciate" when they mean "deprecate". They are different words, "deprecated" is the right one, it is intentional, it is the word.

Sorry, you are the one using the wrong word.

[flywheel]

Yeah, nope yourself. It seems like a lot of people aren't really thinking this through very much.

And that is absolutely the wrong way to approach API development. An API that is being sun-setted should never be removed, because older clients could still use it but sometimes can't be upgraded to newer clients. Removing a v1 API breaks those clients and it's a shitty thing to do to users. Yeah, people should be building NEW things with it, but there's no reason to look at the v1 API with "disgust" as "deprecated" implies - It's simply an older version that should remain functional, if your system is worth half a shit. AWS doesn't terminate older API versions, they just create new versions. Or you can be like Facebook and "deprecate" stuff and just shut it down before your official shutdown date, or not give any notice at all - that's REALLY a fun culture to work in, I guess, for them. "deprecated" is a really negative word, and doesn't even really translate to anything good in terms of software development. It's my opinion that "depreciated" is a far better word and far better outcome when used in software development instead of "deprecated". YMMV.

[jrochkind1]

OK, I understand you have an opinion that API design should be done in a certain way (by the way, by "API" I meant like method signatures, not network API, but it could be either).

And I understand you disapprove of the word "deprecated" being used to refer to API that is discouraged, usually because it will be no longer supported/going away in the future.

But that doesn't change the history of the word. The word "deprecated" is what engineers have been using, intentionally, for several decades.

"Depreciated" is a mistaken variation. Even if you think "deprecated" has unfortunate connotations, it still doesn't make "depreciated" right. "Depreciated", as you said, means losing value over time. That is, 10% a year or something. Deprecated API does not "lose value over time".

The word "deprecated" has historically been used to mean that certain API (again, likely a method or function, I don't mean network api specifically) is now discouraged, it's use is disapproved of. Usually becuase it will be going away in the future. Arguments about whether this is the right way to do API change are entirely separate to this historical and current usage, where API change often IS done this way, and it's what the word is used for.

You can have opinions of how you'd like to people to handle API change over time, but that doesn't chagne the fact that "deprecated" is the word engineers have meant to use for decades. If you'd like to advocate for a differnet word and/or different practice you can -- but all "depreciated" has going for it is it sounds confusingly similar to "deprecated", it is not the word you are looking for.

> Not to be confused with Depreciation.

> In several fields, deprecation is the discouragement of use of some terminology, feature, design, or practice, typically because it has been superseded or is no longer considered efficient or safe, without completely removing it or prohibiting its use.

> It can also imply that a feature, design, or practice will be removed or discontinued entirely in the future

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deprecation

> In accountancy, depreciation refers to two aspects of the same concept: first, the actual decrease of fair value of an asset, such as the decrease in value of factory equipment each year as it is used and wears, and second, the allocation in accounting statements of the original cost of the assets to periods in which the assets are used (depreciation with the matching principle)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depreciation

> In economics, depreciation is the gradual decrease in the economic value of the capital stock of a firm, nation or other entity, either through physical depreciation, obsolescence or changes in the demand for the services of the capital in question.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depreciation_(economics)

Depreciation has nothing to do with what we're talking about, it's not the right word. Deprecation is the word that has been used for decades for API whose use is discouraged, often because it will not be supported in the future. You can argue that a new term is needed, but that's your argument not a historical usage, and there's no reason you need to limit yourselves to words that sound confusingly similar to "deprecation".

[mcswell]

You got a little repetitive there, but yes, I agree: "deprecated" means stop using this because it's going away.

[consultanturnot]

Deprecated is a word. No negativity implied, but equating "deprecated" to "depreciated" is insular. It is okay to be wrong, I have been wrong (George Foreman Grill dissenter..."it drips fat in the front? Gross."). I am not sure what your native language is, and I wish I did so we could communicate, but it is like calling a "warning" as "decay" in English (US).

Typo corrected.

[eigenvector]

Isn't deprecated actually correct here?

It means the feature still works, but will be removed in the future or is no longer supported. There also be may a new implementation of it that the developer would like you to use, hence the warning that it's deprecated.

Depreciation implies a rate of change over time, which isn't the case. Today we deprecate feature X, and in two years we plan remove it. It never depreciates.

[tines]

But "express disapproval of" is exactly the meaning intended when we say that a feature is deprecated. It signifies that it is best practice not to use it.

[harha]

If it’s given as a warning then yes, e.g. the dplyr package in R sometimes outputs “feature xyz is deprecated and will be removed in version x.x”.

Often though it’s used when the feature is already removed, i.e., it’s not only best practice not to use it, but also impossible with that version.

[efreak]

In this case, depreciated is incorrect. Removal has already happened, the "period of time" is already over.

[flywheel]

Removing APIs is not a great practice though. Look at AWS, they version their APIs, they don't just remove them, and removing them should be unnecessary if your underlying tech isn't brittle and badly written. "Depreciated" is a far better term to use, with a far better outcome in my opinion. Companies that remove old versions of APIs and break existing client apps (that possibly can't be udpated) really suck.

[hamburglar]

This is a jaw-droppingly arrogant attitude. You're trying to justify your own incorrect usage by asserting that the person who coined the term decades ago "got it kind of wrong"? And you cringe when others get it right?

"Depreciated" is absolutely the wrong term, because it implies that the value is less, when the intent is to communicate "this is still fully functional, but you are warned away from it because it is targeted for future removal." Deprecated.

[TallGuyShort]

Feels like I often see it used to retire APIs that are now understood to be unsafe, insecure, or otherwise a bad practice for some reason. It gets replaced with an API that does not inherently have that problem, and the old one is in deprecated. it feels like "expressing disapproval of" is the right definition in that case. It's only there for a migration period to happen more gracefully, but its continued use is frowned upon, and not just because it will eventually be removed.

[ineedasername]

If you deconstruct the original latin that forms the word, it's literal translation is something like "ask to go away"

de == away

prek == ask

[pacoverdi]

In French, we have an equivalent for "depreciate": déprécier. But we don't have a close relative for "deprecate" (which translates to "désapprouver, dénigrer" and would never be used for an API).

We tend to use the terms "déprécié" (~depreciated) or "déprécaté" (~deprecated but not valid French).

On the other hand, "deprecate" seems to also translate to "mark as obsolete" according to https://www.wordreference.com/enfr/deprecate

I guess both terms make sense but I would keep using "deprecated".

[cjaybo]

The first definition is intended and more fitting for the usages of "deprecated" I've encountered.

[Xophmeister]

I used to always use "depreciated" until I was embarrassingly corrected one day :P

[hamburglar]

To be frank, grandparent sounds like someone who was corrected one day, and rather than learn something and move on, dug in and developed a detailed justification for why the rest of the world was mistaken so he can cringe about their ignorance.

[theodric]

You could not be more wrong if you practiced every day https://www.etymonline.com/word/deprecate#etymonline_v_29603

[dang]

I appreciate the etymonline reference but I'm afraid you've been breaking the site guidelines quite badly in repeated comments such as this one and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24101885. We ban accounts that do that because we're trying for a bit better than internet-default outcomes on HN. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the spirit of this site more to heart? We'd be grateful.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

No longer have Google Chrome on any devices, switched over to Chromium Edge.

Same browser, different overloads.

Left the default search engine as Bing, but only because Duck Duck Go is useless for geographicly local search.

[RonanTheGrey]

I don't know what they did but several weeks ago DDG got magically better at geographic local search (I do not live in the US and pound my head on that one too).

One day I actually DID need to find something local and so I dutifully typed my search into the FF url bar and hit enter. My default search is DDG but my brain stroked off for a second because the results that came back were 100% what I was looking for and I thought I was on Google. Give it a shot again, they're getting better.

[jimnotgym]

Useless? "Plumber Timbuktu" returns plumbers in Timbuktu.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

I'm on Launceston Tasmania, DDG returns results for Launceston Cornwall England.

I'll try again though as your sibling comment suggests it's improved.