> lmfao. so you're telling me "quantitatively" that google search results have gotten better, without citing any data at all, but with an appeal to common sense and "technological advancement"?
Yes. If that sounds so unacceptable or strange to you, I suggest you try it. Works really well when reasoning about unavailable data, or researching a field with slow peer-review process.
> what if i told you that search is an adversarial problem
Then I get an adversarial reaction and a downvote from you.
> it's possible for google's tech to be getting better slower than the aggregate tech power used to game google search is getting better? is this not a patently obvious possibility?
Yes, that's plausible. Should be measurable quantitively too. Can you cite some data on this? :)
We could compare to the available data on the quality of (HTML) e-mail spam filtering over the years, which all have kept up. Like pg said: Spam is solved, when skilled spammers start creating content which does not look, feel, or talk like spam. So webcontent-spammers still are on the first 2 pages of Google, but with content not classifiable as spam/content farm.
> which benefit google's interests rather than their users.
One of Google's interest is their user. But perhaps not the type of user you are. Studies have shown the value that the tech of Google is delivering its users per year. This value was in the thousandths, and this value has risen. Meanwhile, Google makes about tens of dollars per user per year, less for technical users which don't click ads or block these.
> it's not some kind of gotcha impossibility for google's tech to get much worse over time
It really is, no way to mince it. Google search is funded by Google ad tech. Google ad tech has improved ML by a ton. To say Google tech is getting worse, is to totally overlook deep learning revolution, word2vec, transformers, BERT, etc. etc. etc. To state that, is to reveal the truth that you are ignorant of major technological advances in the past decade, only looking at the issue from the viewpoint of a single atypical Google-search user. What would you even do with quantitive SEQ data?
Do you really think it is possible that Google runs an implementation test of a new ranking model, and deploys it, while all measurements, human labeling, and user tests show it is doing worse? Of course not! Only if you think you are smarter, could you think that Google search changed and has gotten worse.
If Google does ML like the rest of the industry, all model changes move up their designed levers, or these changes are not committed. So if Google was unable to improve search, then Google would have looked exactly like 2008 Google. The fact that it does not, shows either you or Google is wrong. If I had to make a bet...