I’ve taken to asking my coworkers if they feel like “search has gotten worse over the years” to my surprise most have said… no.
The only exception was the other CS teacher. How do your friends feel about how well search works? I feel like I used to know where everything was and someone rearranged my house— it’s not really my house of course but yeah.
@futurebird So, I'd been asking people "does Google search seem less good to you?" since about the turn of the millennium, and largely stopped bothering as of 10 or 15 years ago. The problems you are noting now are ones I have had for two decades or more.
Look, a major mental health agency here wound up getting in trouble to the extent the case wound up before the Supreme Court. I learned of this when a friend emailed me a link to the Boston Globe story. Within two years, all the news coverage had basically disappeared from Google Search.
Maybe they hired a firm to erase it from the internet. Or maybe Google Search just sucks that way.
I knew someone who was murdered. Made headline news. It was never solved. Searching her name no longer brings up the news coverage of her murder. Don't think anybody paid to scrub the internet of her name.
There was a profile, I think in the NYT, about an MD with a novel approach to treating a neurological condition...
@futurebird ...which entailed "microdoses" of melatonin. Well, you can no longer put "microdose" into Google search and not get a flood of results about psychedelics.
All this is why I am so hardcore about bookmarkers, and save every damn thing I might want to see again some day.
@futurebird Also! While I am complaining about this:
There was a point where when I searched on my blog URL, I got N (a small integer) results, but if I searched on "[blog URL] site:WordPress.com" I would get N+M results, including, yes, WordPress blog results that really did mention my blog, and really should have been returned in the result set of the first search.
That's the point at which I knew Google Search had become useless.
@futurebird There's a reason Google Search sucks that most people don't know about. (Actually I think there's several, but one that is not remotely on the radar of people like the sort on Mastodon is...)
There is a profound class divide in internet users. Originally this was framed "digital haves and have nots". While that is still there, it has been eclipsed by another dichotomy it's morphed into: People of the Desktop and People of the Phone.
People of the Desktop are people who learned to use the internet on an "actual computer". This population winds up understanding the internet very differently than the other. The socioeconomic factors of who gets access to desktop/laptop computers mean that this is also a filter for other things like likelihood to have a college education and being comfortable with abstractions.
People of the Desktop tend to retain access to desktops, because they find phones wanting, and know what they're missing.
People of the Phone don't.
@futurebird People of the Phone constitute an absolutely HUGE population of internet users. They have very poor understandings of all aspects of technology. They are disproportionately less educated in general and less comfortable (or absolutely not at all comfortable) with abstractions.
I worked for seven years at a clinic where the vast majority of my patients were People of the Phone. Because I work with people with ADHD, and help them leverage technology to support executive function, I had occasion to actually sit with people and see how they used their phones.
Y'all....
@futurebird People of the Phone usually have no concept of any distinction between their phone, their phone's UI, Google, Google Search, the browser, the search bar, and websites.
For them it's one big seamless mass. Which, of course, Google has long been striving to make it! Google has been trying to deliver them an "internet appliance" user experience, where one doesn't have to understand anything (allegedly) to use the internet.
Consequently, People of the Phone use Google Search kind of like an app manager. They want to put a one word search string in and get the obvious "app" back. If they put in "pizza" they want the nearest pizzaria to come up, not a page about how to make pizza or an article explaining what pizza is or a history of it.
@siderea @futurebird I'm on the fence about whether this claim is accurate or whether it's a narrative for tech folks to feel superior to everyone else.
@dalias
> a way for tech folk to feel superior
That danger is there, it is tempting mind-candy. But
@siderea does seem to be talking about big tech depriving people of a clear view of tech possibilities.
@strypey had thoughts on this, that "People of the Phone" view tech as just another convenience.
Somehow, we blame Google for how it made Android but not Apple for how it made iOS. Did Apple do it right, as it claims?
@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.n
> But I'm not convinced the difference is an economic one.
Well, good, because the contention was not an economic one. I spoke with precision.
That said, I gotta argue with you about this:
> Used laptops are cheap as chips and last longer than brand new, more expensive phones.
That's entirely immaterial, first, and, second, is an apples to oranges comparison - why when discussing economic accessibility would you compare a top of the line phone to a bottom of the line laptop? Third, pragmatically speaking, the "Obamaphone" (LifeLine) program was handing out *free* Android phones to people on Medicaid. It's hard to beat free. If one didn't qualify for that program, well, TracFone was selling refurbished Android phones for $20. I bought several.
@siderea
> That's entirely immaterial
The relative affordability of different kinds of devices isn't key to the points you're making about the different ways people conceptualize digital tech, true. Also, we're observing different countries, so the economics we observe may differ considerably.
(1/?)
@siderea
I'm not aware of any handing out of free phones in Aotearoa. Nor any significant phone refurbishment schemes. We do have a thriving market in second-hand devices, possibly due to the expense of shipping new ones to a South Pacific country with the population of a small city, by world standards. But I've only seen late model phones for sale, at prices not much lower than what they sold for new.
(2/?)
@siderea
I'm saying all this as context for answering this question...
> why when discussing economic accessibility would you compare a top of the line phone to a bottom of the line laptop?
Because unlike laptops, which can be kept running for a decade with careful maintenance, mobiles are designed to be useless after a couple of years, and it's very difficult to keep them usable after that time. So expensive phones and cheap used laptops are the options here.
@strypey
> difficult to keep mobiles usable after a couple of years
Yeah. Even if we could dual-boot a phone into a slower-over-time Android and, say, #postmarketOS , and run Android for occasional apps, Android bloat means a lot of wasted storage, to the extent another OS couldn't be accommodated.
If PotP could live with postmarketOS, it would be an improvement - mobile devices have good hardware, great on power consumption!
@dalias @futurebird
@tetrislife
> we blame Google for how it made Android but not Apple for how it made iOS. Did Apple do it right, as it claims?
No, they did it worse; at least people using Android can choose how to install apps. In some cases they can even install a different OS. But IMHO both companies were aiming to create an internet consumption device. As easy to use (and deliver advertising through) as the early televisions, and as mystifying of the underlying tech.
@tetrislife
> Somehow, we blame Google for how it made Android but not Apple for how it made iOS.
Do we?
"Remember Alice? This is a song about Alice." This is a discussion of Google Search and why it sucks. It sucks because also makes phones, and I have put forth a contention that Google Search's observable behavior is a product of design choices to optimize for a particular large set of its phone users.
That is why we are not discussing Apple.
You definitely get points in my book for the spot-on reference to that song! 😄
@siderea
didn't say Apple was in this discussion, more of "is it making tech more accessible than the G". It is possible to fit user needs and then exploit them.
@dalias @strypey
> not sure which posts referred to
yeah, what I recalled isn't explicit in that post
https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/@strypey/109404186032703244
but it sounded like you saw PotP use tech without hangups (unlike PotD)
@futurebird
Getting real tired of "sounded like said something completely other" than what I actually said.
@siderea
I think that post was directed at me :)
@siderea @tetrislife @dalias @strypey @futurebird I'm a hardcore Pixel user (for the ease-of-life features) and I can confidently say that Google search is *not* better via phone, including their own phones.
I've been a heavy mobile-first user for about a decade because my corporate overlords observe everything done on computers (theirs or my own) from my home internet.
As a power user, I think it's not a "me" problem.
Where did you get the impression someone said search is better via phone?
@siderea @tetrislife @dalias @strypey @futurebird I encourage you to re-read your thread and several side replies for the throughline on the search experience being designed for certain Google users. It's also not designed for them either.
I came here to join a conversation and not to have a weird fight. So, I'm going to turn off notifications for this thread and close that out.
Thanks for your time.
@tetrislife
> strypey had thoughts on this, that "People of the Phone" view tech as just another convenience
I'm not sure exactly which posts you're referring to, but I too observe this divide between...
> People of the Desktop and People of the Phone
... as @siderea puts it, and the different ways they approach digital tech. But I'm not convinced the difference is an economic one. Used laptops are cheap as chips and last longer than brand new, more expensive phones.
@dalias @futurebird