[jedberg]

I think your premise is wrong. The service isn't broken. I'd assume Google has enough people and data to know that it's doing what most people want. They were even kind enough to put in a workaround for the minority for whom it doesn't work well (which appears to be OP).

[xg15]

Most people want to have a full result page of nothing but login walls when searching for any kind of image?

[jedberg]

Most people who click on Pinterest links are already logged into Pinterest...

[abc-xyz]

There’s no way that’s true. I’d be surprised if even 1% of the Google users paid attention to the source site underneath the image.

And you’d think people with a Pinterest account would opt to search on their website/app rather than going through Google (thus making it even more unlikely that the Google user has a Pinterest account).

[alisonkisk]

Pinterest has a huge user base. They don't need to look at the source if they have an account; the link will work fine.

And, no, most people don't bother picking a site before searching. Why would they artificially limit their results? People don't even visit amazon before searching for Amazon products.

[abc-xyz]

Pinterest’s user-base is surely minuscule compared to the amount of users using Google Image Search.

I’m not saying that 100% of all users with a Pinterest account use their website/app, but many of them will of course opt to use Pinterest’s website/app for their image searches, which means an even smaller percentage of the Google Image Search users will have a Pinterest account.

[FireBeyond]

Not just Image Search - Pinterest often dominates Text Search, and people here are "Oh well, they figured out how to deliver what Google wants!"

[xg15]

But not most people doing a Google search. Anyone who is not on Pinterest has its result page spammed with useless links.

[wolco2]

For the amount of people hired you would assume they had the best people.

But their hiring process is broken. They randomly hire a % of people who pass an algorithm test. It's so random that 70% of their workforce wouldn't be hired again if they had to go through that process.

The brand is so strong that people think anyone who makes it into google must be the best of the best. It's more like a random person who has studied leetcode.