WTF happened to Google?

[specious_reasons]

Originally Posted by Ymir's blood

I locked into HTML only some yeats back.

Keats and Yeats are on your side
But you lose because Wilde is on mine

[Ymir's blood]

A lot of that is creeping in while posting from the phone.

[specious_reasons]

Originally Posted by Ymir's blood

A lot of that is creeping in while posting from the phone.

I can barely type on a keyboard. That mistake just made The Smiths leap unbidden into my mind.

[Deadlokd]

Tread softly for you tread on my gmail.

Which isn't bad and still does what it is designed to do; to wit, to deliver the electronic missives to my eyes.

[Corona688]

I remember when Google first came around...

In a market already oversaturated with dozens of search engines -- nearly all of which were garbage -- they stood out as ungimmicky, functional, and not pushy at all. They spread virally, not by invitation or incentives or other such garbage. It had simple instructions to use it which could be used in a powerful way. It was browser nonspecific and light on javascript. That's all it was you got, and people loved it.

Fast forward to now with personalized igoogle pages complete with flash-animated dancing hamsters, a search which can't have instructions because its method of operation changes the board's whim, a javascript textbox which rushes you and makes bad guesses about what you "really" meant, and ads for their 'chrome' browser plastered everywhere you go.

[Waluigi]

Yes, but you can still turn off a lot of that stuff. Don't use iGoogle and turn off instant search, and it's not a terribly different experience from 10+ years ago.

They continue to make small improvements to their basic search, and I can still find what I'm looking for "above the fold" (i.e., without scrolling) 9 out of 10 times. There's something to be said for that.

[Corona688]

Maybe you can. Lots of things have caught on to their link-ranking schemes and created farms of websites which do nothing but link to each other, falsely inflating each others' google rankings. This happens a lot with specialized information, like device drivers, manuals, and datasheets. You don't get the manufacturer, you get 9,000 sites probably owned by the same syndicate who all want to sell you a piece of information freely given away by the manufacturer.

But that's besides the point. Google is no longer as attractive as it was, and doesn't seem to much care. If bing wasn't such a piece of garbage, it might actually be competitive now...

[Ymir's blood]

You can turn off Instant, but not the drop down auto-complete. The ability to squelch that was disabled when Instant was launched. There is no way to disable its tendency to second guess your search terms either.

I've disabled the auto-complete with AdBlock, but that screws up the image search as well.

[lisarea]

For plain old searches, ixquick is way better than Google. Also, it doesn't log your IP, and all searches are encrypted by default now.

In fact, I'd switched to it a while back, but started using Google again out of some totally absurd levels of laziness after I replaced my hard drive. Switching again!

[Ymir's blood]

I've thought about switching but had only come across references to Yahoo (of course) and Bing. The former has given me annoyances with its 'groups' stuff in the past and the latter is MS.

[lisarea]

I know a lot of people also like duckduckgo, and for looking for alternatives generally, you can look here. Sometimes they have things you haven't thought of before.

Note: startpage is ixquick. I don't know what the difference is. They might have just started branding it as startpage or something.

[Qingdai]

I miss Highway61.com for years I thought Google had just changed it's name from Highway 61. They were so similar. It looks like Yahoo bought them up. Yuck.

[Ari]

They have really gone down hill.
"Don't be evil" is starting to sound more and more like Fox's "Fair and Balanced."

[Doctor X]

Originally Posted by lisarea

For plain old searches, ixquick is way better than Google. Also, it doesn't log your IP, and all searches are encrypted by default now.

Works really nice on Safari if you download glims which makes Safari . . . pretty

--J.D.

[Demimonde]

[Doctor X]

Originally Posted by Demimonde

This






--J.D.

[Corona688]

The "I'm feeling lucky" button hasn't worked for me for some months now. It just takes me to the first page of results.

[JoeP]

A glance-misread of Corona's post makes me think of a button that really ought to be on Cthuugle:

[lisarea]

GOOGLE!

I was digging around in a bunch of CCs and shit for someone's contact info, and GOOGLE SENT THEM SOME STUPID SPAM FROM ME saying I wanted to invite them to use more Google shit because of how great it is.

I showed them, though, I sent the guy another email saying, PRETEND I SAID THE OPPOSITE OF THAT. GOOGLE IS TERRIBLE.

[Corona688]

Google sent spam based on your contact list?

[lisarea]

Oh, no. Not quite that bad. I'm assuming I gently and accidentally grazed the Chat icon, because the spam was all like, "OH HEY LISA PEA REALLY WANTS TO GCHAT WITH YOU! JOIN GOOGLE!"

I only noticed something even happened because I was looking in my outbox for something else. God only knows how many of my other fingerspazzes have been immortalized as spam.

[Ymir's blood]

I never get any lisaspam.

[Deadlokd]

Google.ru has an interactive awesome by Stanislaw Lem. Even though he is dead.

[lisarea]

HA HA!

I just replicated my spamming technique on Mr. blood! It is in fact that act of clicking on that thing that sends the spams!

Oh, and hey, you know all that stuff that spam said about how great Google is? Pretend I said NOT! at the end!

[Ymir's blood]

When I get home I am going to print out those emails and frame them!