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Comment by lloydde | Hacker News Reader

This is brutal. I'm often thankful to the quick answer to measuring or history questions, but even for these easy questions I've seen Google share somewhat incorrect or confusing information as authoritative.

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Ya, I really don't see how they can justify displaying other people's content. They did the work, but they don't get the clicks or ad revenue or even a chance to keep the user on the site.

I wonder how Google would like it if someone launched a site that when you search, it doesn't display results from its own database, but perhaps just a selection of the best results from Google.

There are sites like that. Startpage.com is an example.

I always thought that services like Startpage or DDG paid for access to search databases, it maybe some form of revenue sharing. It's not that they're stealing the search results from Bing or Google and repackage them.

Perhaps you're right.

It is funny you say that.

I remember when you would search for an answer, and a small answer would be included in the description under the link, so you wouldn't have to click on it.

Then they started to go away, because no one was clicking on them because they didn't need to.

Now you rarely get the answer without clicking on it.

So Google has made the internet worse.

>So Google has made the internet worse.

By not including the answer?

Or, by including the answer and putting the sites that gave reliable answers out of business in the first place?

I suspect most of those history questions are answered via Wikipedia. From what I've seen if the snippet isn't using Wikipedia it's not useful and/or accurate.

Now, that you point it out, I think that is the situation. When the answer were not easily verifiable it has been websites I wasn't familiar with.

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