I'm also happy it doesn't include information about swifts the animal when I search for Swift the programming language.
Even when it's about political stuff - I'm rather happy I don't get anti-vax information when I'm searching for health information. I'm also happy Google doesn't show me clickbait because it knows I'm not interested.
The idea of a filter bubble is definitely worth addressing, but I see no reason why getting more information music notes when I'm trying to search for information about C# is remotely beneficial. I can use Startpage or Incognito if I want to avoid filter bubbling, but for the vast majority of searches I do, relevance to me is useful.
But it's not best addressed through fear-mongering. Don't call it a child's imitation just because you don't understand how it could be useful.
The tradeoff being that it won't give the anti-vaxxers information that refutes their claims. Is that _really_ what you want?
Contrast that with [did dinosaurs live] which has a mix of creationist and normal results, despite meaning the same thing.
But this is part of the problem, isn't it? You might not get the anti-vax information, but others will see that instead of REAL information.
And, be honest with yourself. Some of what you do want to see would be considered clickbait by others, it's just that Google already knows you well enough to show you things that fit your own world view.
https://www.wired.com/2015/08/googles-search-algorithm-steal...
> Even when it's about political stuff - I'm rather happy I don't get anti-vax information when I'm searching for health information.
Health information should not be considered political stuff. Unfortunately, it is ... at least in some countries.
You all are taking this one argument out of context. He wasn't talking about restaurants. But everyone here is.
Obviously restaurants should be personalized. But no one was saying they shouldn't.
You have to take the argument in the essay and try to think of the most persuasive possible interpretation. Is that "If I search for something in Seattle, it would be stupid to return results in Chicago"? Probably not.
My webdev friend was excited that her personal site was being returned in her search results whenever someone searched a project she had worked on. I suggested that google was serving her personalized results. She searched in incognito. Her site was still being returned. Pretty good, right? She was getting exposure.
When we used a VPN, she was not in the results. Google knew that our searches came from our IP address, and that searches from our IP should include her site, since she mostly visited her site from our IP. Or something along those lines. Either way, it was a misleading worldview.
I'm going to be harsh for a second, but I mean this lovingly: Stop being naive. It's important for us to be skeptical of Google. They're the thousand-pound gorilla, and the moment they do more than wink and nod at their "Don't be evil" philosophy then we should start getting scared.
How do you distinguish between "good" and "bad" personalisation at scale? How do their algorithms know what should and shouldn't be personalised? Do humans even agree on where to draw the line?
Google process literally trillions of searches per year, with each search taking a few milliseconds. You're asking them to make a complex tradeoff between providing completely irrelevant results for some queries and excessively personalised results for others. I don't disagree that they could probably do a better job of making that tradeoff, but I don't think that they're being malicious or negligent either. I think that they're making perfectly reasonable engineering decisions given the constraints of scale.
I don't think I am being naive. I don't blindly trust Google. I think that there are many important questions to be asked about how major internet companies collect, store and process our personal data. I think that America urgently needs to pass legislation equivalent to our General Data Protection Regulation. I think that there are significant concerns about the quality of information that people see online, but I think that publishers play a far greater role than Google in this respect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...
What about applying it to non-transactional stuff like news? Should it personalise results based on what it thinks I like?
Again with subjective/objective distinction — I know my friend will tailor movie recommendations to me based on mutual interests / past discussions.
I expect though that a library catalogue would point me to the same info on global warming no matter who I am.
The trouble at the moment is that Google is conflating these two types of interaction & the user doesn't know which of their queries are personalised (and to what extent / based on what criteria).
> How do their algorithms know what should and shouldn't be personalised? Do humans even agree on where to draw the line?
In my opinion, this is the crux of it — are we happy with algorithms filling this blank unfettered, based on their own learning. If not, it's something that we have to discuss and agree on, and then enforce / bring visibility to.
At present, Google aren't negligent (legally anyway, as we haven't set any bar) and may not be acting maliciously. But if we think change is necessary (at least for visibility of what's happening under the hood), we need to ask the questions around these services to drive that change
https://searchengineland.com/responding-to-complaints-google...
My takeaway is that the whole thread of the first comment should be collapsed, which is usual for HN. Important topics get ignored or derailed.
In our case, I just think it's interesting that my webdev friend was trying to ascertain truth about the world -- "is she associated with the project she worked on?" -- and the answer came up "yes!" for her even though it was "Nope" for the rest of the world.
Sure, it's an interesting question of which tradeoffs they should make. But as users, it's not really our responsibility to be concerned about that. All we know is that Google is acting a bit strangely.
To be clear, if Google stayed how it currently is, I'd have no problem at all. I'm just worried that google can go from strange to malicious at the flip of a switch. It's unsettling that they're the only realistic option. DDG has been picking up steam, but hopefully they'll do more than nip at Google's heels.
What evidence do you even have that they didn't go malicious? And how could you gather such evidence if you don't have any?
>>I'd much rather type "takeaway pizza chicago" than have google mind-read where I want the pizza delivered.
Some people are saying that restaurants shouldn't be personalized.
I'm often searching for "ruby" (the programming language not the gemstone) and need to find "gems" (modules for the "ruby" language) and often these have names that have other meanings like "devise", "pundit", "ransack", "bootstrap", "carrierwave", "paperclip", "fog", "cucumber", "refinery", etc etc.
Similarly, having some basics about your geographic location, spoken language, etc. would seem to be quite helpful. If only to help separate out things like that there are 8000+ "Park Street" in the US when I type in an address and Google gives me the one closest to my location.
grumble grumble chef knife, chef cookbook, chef recipe, chef cucumber incoherent mumbling
So without thinking I type record plane 1939-1945 into Google. And guess what? I get information about hand planes, pictures of hand planes in the images section, links to ebay auctions for vintage planes etc, and in between these there were only a few results related to aircraft combat during WWII.
The same query in incognito mode doesn't return even a single link related to hand tools.
For expats, this is one of the worst, constant reminders. One has to adjust every search/url to accommodate for the server's location-based interpretation of intent. Some sites won't even let visitors use the .com version. Surely regulation plays a part, but it's incredibly frustrating.
Same with marrying the language to the country, if I want to buy a flight from Germany, don't change the page to German!
In other words this header is the most reliable piece of information to know what language the user wants. Somehow big tech decided IP geolocation is more reliable.
Do use the header, but always be open for the user changing the language too.
Unfettered exploration is for dicking around when you have nothing better to do. If you actually know what you're looking for, then you want the answer you wanted to be on the top, and any exploration is a flaw that only gets in your way.
It's also very useful for learning new things.
Yes, Google probably does a better job than ever before in finding me the most relevant StackOverflow result, but for exploration usage it's become very useless.
I've had the theory that the growing popularity of "awesome"-lists and its likes is mainly due to Google's reduced explorability.
I think about that every time I go off to incognito to make Google stop hobbling my results and give me the thing I was actually trying to find.
Yes I do believe it's up for grabs.
Personalized sales strategies can also lead to the reverse: [1]
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/personalized-pricing-smart-st...
&pws=0
My problem nowadays is with the idea that Google, et al, all believe they're own myth of being the best at XYZ user experience and if you disagree then you're a curmudgeon or an idiot who "doesn't get it".
Why wouldn't they put a button like that? At what point did optionality and customization of your user experience become undesirable to the point that you need to obfuscate or prevent it?
My guess is that too many people read Don't Make Me Think as dogma and now we're in a world where the tech industry assumes they need to do all the thinking for anyone that touches their product and the users brought up in this world have no idea what it's like to not have their UX dictated to them.
They already have a button that would cause far more confusion if accidentally pressed (Feeling Lucky) since it results in a page that isn't a set of google search results.
Sorry, gotta say that those are pretty weak counterpoints... I expected something about how Google's business interest has everything to do with personalized search and each non-personalized search would result in less revenue, or something like that.
I can't guarantee it still works, either.
And so would most HN readers. However, the rest of the world outside of the tech industry cares more about convenience and simplicity than exploration. Most people are willfully ignorant, driven from dawn to dusk by their own habits, rather than some intrinsic desire for self-actualization and the acquisition of knowledge.
Give them more convenience, even at the cost of flexibility, and non-technologists love it.
That doesn't make us better than them, or vice versa. We've chosen to be a little different is all.
This is not personalization. This is a child's imitation of it. An unpersonalized search engine is much better than this thing that simply hides any interesting content from you in favor of showing you something related to your previous search or to whatever nonsense your neighbors look up. Once upon a time, the internet allowed you to escape your geography. No longer.
I'd much rather type "takeaway pizza chicago" than have google mind-read where I want the pizza delivered. Search is not always about looking up something already connected to you. It used to be about unfettered exploration.