[malux85]

And now it's become an anti-signal. If I search for a hotel the top N results are for other hotels, and then results for travel agents, and buried somewhere in this sea of uselessness is the result I searched for. The managers at Google have become self interested promotion hunters, and the programmers weak sycophants. It wasn't like this in the early days when I was there, the best ideas won, but then the B player managers were hired and the rot started.

[lanstin]

It isn't the managers it is the business. All those geniuses hired and over years and years no one came up with another business model but ads. I pay for ad-free YouTube and would happily pay for ad free search. As would many. Many people would like a google scale micropayments system that isn't ads. The failure to do this led directly to social media becoming customer devouring experiences rather than making good products people want.

[yifanl]

Paradoxically, the people who pay for adfree experiences would be the most valuable targets for ads, so I suspect any pay for no ads arrangement will be temporary at best.

[FireBeyond]

Exactly. Next up, it'll be on the Plus tier to "help subsidize the low price of this tier".

[shinryuu]

Check out kagi; adfree search

[newswasboring]

> All those geniuses hired and over years and years no one came up with another business model but ads

This isn't true, there were many other ideas. It's just that only KPI was how much money they can make, thus ads won. Companies don't have an axis of ethics or morality.

[lanstin]

Ideas don't count - it's persuasion and execution that matter. One of the several reasons that the rule is not ruled by smartness/rationality.

[newswasboring]

I think we are talking past each other. I'm saying there are proposed models which are not ads, but they don't maximize earnings. A silicon valley company will always choose earnings over anything else.

[stevage]

I refuse to pay for ad free YouTube + otherwise I'd watch even more of it. The annoyingness of ads is a pretty important brake.

[s1mplicissimus]

There's other options to break this kind of cognitive pattern, like https://unhook.app/

If I want them, I can use them. No need to justify ads for this use case.

[stevage]

That doesn't work on the TV. It also apparently requires using a specific browser (Kiwi) to work on mobile.

But thanks, still useful on desktop.

[BobaFloutist]

Seems to work in Firefox on Android?

[Applejinx]

Never thought I would go to DuckDuckGo for searching, ever. I'd do Kagi but I don't like their use of Yandex so I'll keep an eye on whether they figure their stuff out politically. I'd pay for search but not if it's paying Russia, I've been very unhappy with what Russia does with money in recent decades.

[mentalgear]

Been using DuckDuckGo for almost 2 years now - couldn't believe it at first, but results are at least as good, if not even better than Google.

[stevage]

I used Kagi for a year or two then switched to DDG. It's fine. I do not miss Google at all.

[jpalomaki]

Kagi is using Google search behind the scenes. I think that’s why it felt so easy to switch to.

[Applejinx]

That tracks with the 'we use everybody and curate optimal results' model they've got going on, but I wouldn't be changing the search habits of decades if I didn't mean to actively reject what Google search has turned into. So, not a good way to justify a paying-them model.

[riku_iki]

> The managers at Google have become self interested promotion hunters, and the programmers weak sycophants. It wasn't like this in the early days when I was there, the best ideas won, but then the B player managers were hired and the rot started.

I bet they run some metrics, and while hyper-intelligent persons like you are annoyed, there is a chance that avg joes representing 95% of revenue are fine with that.

[chairmansteve]

When it comes to anything tech related, the HN crowd are trend setters.

And.... the world is crying out for a google alternative. If it ever appears, the tech savvy people will be the first to move, followed by everyone else.

[riku_iki]

Kagi is waiting for your money

[sdf2erf]

In the early days they werent a publicy traded company and Brin/Page did not get exposed to the taste of being ultra-wealthy.

Steve Jobs looking back now is incredibly rare - someone who was wealthy but had the spirit of innovation to keep going again and again.

[pton_xd]

> If I search for a hotel the top N results are for other hotels, and then results for travel agents, and buried somewhere in this sea of uselessness is the result I searched for.

The other day I had a DMV appointment scheduled on my Google Calendar with the office address saved in the location field. I opened the event and clicked on the address to navigate there.

I didn't realize initially but the first few Google Maps results were ads! When clicking on an exact address link!! I almost ended up at some apartment complex 2 miles away. Absolutely bewildering.