[anticristi]

Thanks for highlighting this!

I was getting the feeling that search has become increasingly crappier. Not just Spotify, but also in other places like Google, Facebook and DuckDuckGo. Search for anything and you'll get something "pausibly deniability" close to what you typed, but optimized for metrics that are way beyond the user's comprehension.

I feel like singling out Facebook, the worst offender: Their search is optimized for "engagement", i.e., distracting you from what you originally looked for, without you immediately realizing it.

[the_only_law]

Hah, I searched “cam” in the windows search bar the other day looking to open the camera app, but windows decided I was actually looking for “Calculator” or a handful of other things that didn’t have a single “M” in it listed ahead of the actual camera app.

[myself248]

Getting a bit off-topic here but YES, this drives me bonkers.

Worse yet is that if I pause there for a moment, the search results continue to reorganize themselves, so that by the time I'm ready with a screenshot, the wrong answer has vanished. I can only catch it on video.

How did search turn so terrible?

[mlazos]

This has been the absolute biggest surprise from me switching to MacOS after years in windows land. I can hit enter on my spotlight search results before they’re rendered and be confident. I don’t event need cmd+tab anymore. MS on the other hand STILL doesn’t have a search right, and they have a search engine. FYI this was a running joke at MS when I worked there, there is no search in any MS product that is functional. If you’re lucky you’ll get exact string matching, sometimes not even that?

[CamperBob2]

How did search turn so terrible?

Not enough people complained, and/or voted with their dollars and/or attention.

The few people who do complain are inevitably answered with the ever-present refrain of the Windows fan club ("You just don't like change!"), which effectively cuts off any avenues for argument in favor of the perfectly-good status quo. The only way forward from that point is down.

[adriand]

A related issue is when autocorrect “corrects” things that I’ve spelled correctly, which drives me absolutely nuts. The other day I was texting someone about music and I wrote “melodies” which was “corrected” to “Melodie’s”. In fact on iOS this is still happening as I write this!

[OCISLY]

YouTube not even try to hide fact it presents search reasults that are completly not relevant to user query.

[mistermann]

> I was getting the feeling that search has become increasingly crappier.

Whether that is a consequence of it becoming harder, or by design is the important question. I can think of a few reasons an uninformed or misinformed general public would benefit some people.