Edit:
The poll stopped me in my tracks but it’s actually even worse.
It should not take this long to get to imdb
Edit2: didn’t even realize it thinks I’ll “love it” based on things I look up. I don’t think I’d like it.
Edit³: IMDb was the example I used without thinking. I’m aware that there’s a link to it in the top card. It’s the other web results that I don’t already know about that I’d like to see. I now know there’s a hidden “web” tab. There’s also https://www.google.com/search?udm=14&q=example` but it’s still mildly infuriating that you have to know about these things to get the basic results we expected for years.
Damn. I switched to DDG like well over a year ago and thought I was just kind of putting up with it for the sake of privacy. Turns out I didn’t know how good I have it
Exactly. I’ve been using DDG for years now and when I have to use Google search for whatever reason, I am quickly reminded how crap ggl is.
I just wish DDG would finally kill their Apple Maps. Over here they’re so incredibly unusable it’s just not funny any more. I’ll take here maps before that POS.
It’s so bad that on desktop, you can’t even go and click on alternative elements on the map without explicitly changing your search terms to them. You see them, but they’re non-interactive. So the incredibly common case “I remember the name of the restaurant next to this place” (or something similar) cannot be done on DDG, on account of getting Apple money to include their maps.
Using a specialized tool for the task is the way to go, in my opinion. I use OpenStreetMaps when I need to look at the map. If I’m looking for some famous(ish) place, I look it up on Wikipedia and jump to OSM from there.
Completely agree! I wish you could choose which map to use. I still use and love google maps.
It shouldn’t take this long to get to imdb
In case anyone here isn’t aware, you can directly search IMDB from DuckDuckGo by using the bang
!imdb.I can also search IMDB from IMDB.
DDG is moving into the same direction. I had to use ublock to hide the news block that appears when I’m searching for a movie/show in order to avoid spoilers.
In fact this was one of the key features lauded about DDG in its early days, the “instant result”-boxes.
Google kinda only went hard on them afterwards, probably seeing a good idea over at DDG because for the vast majority of people, they’re looking for answers and results, not specifically objects of type link-to-search-result. They don’t need a list of links, so long as the information they were after is reliably in those generated cards.
See OP wanting an IMDB link, which is directly there as Google correctly assumed that’s a very very very common use case for googling the name of a movie.
IMDB I can accept, random news websites - no.
Kagi has all these options as well but everything can be disabled in the settings.
I had the identical reaction. Thanks OP for posting this repellent screenshot. So glad I changed my defaults.
We had no idea how good we had it back then, did we?
deleted by creator
A poll in the search results, what the heck?!
They’re throwing shit at the wall I guess. Last week I got this in my YouTube feed:
Great, now they’re going to start giving us exams before we’re allowed to watch a video.
Are they trying to train an AI?
I doubt it. They know I’m into audio production and this is kind of a softball question. Maybe if they start giving me more advanced ones.
The Gemini logo next to the word “Experiment” makes me suspicious.
The quiz itself was definitely made by an AI.
I think it’s just something creators can do to boost gain extra impressions but apparently they don’t have to do it themselves anymore…
no, too stupid of a question
Simple questions with known answers might be a way to weed out malicious/untrustworthy responders.
Yes, control questions, in a form, with 20 other open-ended questions which answers actually have value.
This is solely for engagement. Trivia questions have no value for training models.
Is it low pitch?
No, it’s lower volume (think amplification). Lower pitch would be from low frequency.
Here’s duckduckgo result for comparison
Here’s AskJeeves result for comparison
That’s spectacularly bad.
Yeah I have no idea what any if that is! I miss Jeeves :(
Wow, that’s incredibly bad.
Damn, I knew Jeeves had fallen but this is actually baffling.
Here is Kagi. It is customizable, so it will look different for everyone.
Did you move your videos section? Mine is at the top (but I’m also on mobile)
I don’t recall editing placement, only filtering sources from the search.
This is the impetus I needed
1 is the right number of info cards
Your daily reminder that DDG also has an infinite scroll option under its settings. (Seriously, DDG’s Settings menu is so good.}
Did it spoil the movie in the suggested questions 💀
Probably, luckily I had no interest in watching it and looked it up for other reasons.
I know this won’t be the answer people want, but to be perfectly frank if I know I want the IMDb page for a movie, I put IMDb in the query. It will put the page you want right at the top, none of that extra shit, and it will even probably predict what you’re typing before you finish.
separately, imdb itself has been enshittified enough that, most times, i don’t want the imdb page as a search result.
Anyone know good alternatives?
imdb wasn’t really the point, that’s on me, I could have also just tapped imdb on the card at the very top. It’s the other sites that I don’t know to search for that I would like to see promoted
Don’t worry, Google is actually getting sued for its various malpractices (paying browsers millions to be their default search engine, Google adsense putting the best bidder at the top of the search results, etc). It might even come to the US justice system ordering the breakup of various Google products into smaller independent companies.
It was too good and offered no financial incentive for them to continue with it. It’s better if users scroll endlessly looking for the information that used to simply be available instantly.
In fairness, IMDB is right there on the first info card.
As a side point: IMDB’s page is even more obtuse and unnavigable than it was 5 years ago. Literally no hotbar…
Every front end design dev that graduated in the last decade is brain damaged
That’s Amazon’s way of working. They push the content that they want you to use over what you want to use.
This seems so fuckdamn back asswards to me. I mean the website experience is 80% of the service. Why alienate visitors for the CHANCE to upsell them when failure means they stop using the service?
I mean let’s consider the opposite: What if every time you opened the page, stuff you WANTED was there instead of stuff THEY want you to want? I guarantee that would drive sales and satisfaction better than the impulse buy chinese shit that breaks in 3 uses.
It’s not the individual contributors writing the website that are making these decisions, it’s people in $1000 suits, sitting on the 44th floor of a Manhattan skyrise asking “how do we make red line go up?”.
There were at least a group of people overseeing the redesign, and none of them thought that making the site harder to navigate would turn off visitors, all they saw was the opportunity to advertise even harder.
MBAs are ruining literally everything and it’s getting to the point where they need to be dragged out into the streets.
I remember a time where you could get multiple search results without scrolling
So one doesn’t count.
Yes, but their edit says that it shouldn’t take so long to get to IMDB which is what I was commenting on.
The fact that there is only one result is awful.
If anyone still wants to use google without this, you can use this url, replacing ‘%s’ with your search
https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14You can add it as a search engine on your browser for fewer steps. There are add-ons that can help you with that.
To be fair. All the information for the movie is right there at the top. If you wanted just info about the movie.
The poll though… Ya… That’s kinda crazy.
You’d think that if you knew the answer to the poll question, you wouldn’t have Googled the title of the movie. I just don’t understand the thought process that led to this happening.
Love the podcast, yeah.
If you’ve seen a movie you wouldn’t search for it?
Not really, unless I wanted to know more about a specific part of it, like an explanation for a scene or the screen writer or wherever, and then I’d Google with keywords specific for that, not just the movie name. If I’m just searching a movie name it would probably be too know whether stuff Google throws up on top of their results, to be fair to them.
Tbf there’s a link to imdb on the first image
Yeah I usually like the Google boxes in search results, but this is so excessive. Everything after and including the polls is just completely unnecessary
I switched to DuckDuckGo on all my devices and I get shocked that people can’t find anything when they search.
Momentum’s a bitch. I’ve been using google search since I lost touch with Jeeves and that pile of dogs ran away.
…dogs?
It sucks, yes. But, if you select the “web” tab instead of the “all” tab at the top of the page, you’ll get something more akin to what you’re looking for. There’s probably even a way to script it so that it defaults to that view.
The tab that you have to scroll past shopping to know it even exists.
Yep! So convenient /s
