Hacker News Reader

Comment by swalsh | Hacker News Reader

The google search appliance might have been one of the worst products I've ever used in my career. If they're going to make a box, I hope they put some effort into it.

View on HN

I actually mourn the loss of it. It felt so much better than any other accursed on-prem search solution I've seen since.

fastsearch was pretty good before Microsoft bought it.. Elastic is good enough.

> Elastic is good enough.

Probably the most praise I’ve ever seen about Elastic.

I do respect the amount of power and utility, and it’s definitely a workhorse, but it’s like a horse with one human leg, a bad eye, extra bones but also not enough bones, and a French accent but only knows Korean. Once you get used to the fact that you can’t do what you intend to, but you can do what elastic wants, it becomes a lot more manageable.

The box might have been awful, but the sigh of relief when seeing a website was using it was wonderful.

I don't think GP is talking about the "search with google" box on third party sites. They're talking about a physical on-prem search server (box) that google used to distribute.

Strictly speaking Google still make boxes for people just in a different market.

What was so bad about the search appliance though? Physical? Software?

My theory is that the heuristics (PageRank and click-through feedback) that made 2008 Google great don't work in corporate environments.

Hiring a 2010-era SEO expert to spam the company Notion with backlinks to the stuff I've written.

Common Confluence SEO at my company is to add a bunch of keywords then change the text color to white!

I wonder if the improvements in semantic search have changed that at all. For a big company though, you might need a pretty beefy setup to perform the initial indexing.

The Netflix appliance is pretty good in my experience. No reason Google couldn’t pull something similar off themselves, unless they’re being very Google about it.

They have some incredible hardware talent (TPUs, Pixels), but I'm guessing this project will not get the polish of those more public facing products

Given the myraid of issues they seem to have, I am not sure I would classify Pixels as having polish. But yes, they definitely have the talent to make some good hardware. It's just a matter of whether their priorities match those of their users.

I can't think of a major phone brand that hasn't had some kind of major issue over the years. The batteries of the Note 7, iPhone "antenna gate" (and the more recent lack of advertised AI debacle), etc.

How would you say it compares to those?

I think Pixels are pretty polished, at least compared to all the cheapo off-brand Android options out there. Some people like Samsung better but I can't stand their UI. Apple would be fine if I could sideload...

Samsung with a 3rd party launcher works pretty well

Do they only sell those to ISPs or could a housing developer or a hotelier get their hands on those?

They don't sell them. But, if the developer / hotelier had a sufficiently large network, think providing service equivalent to the number of rooms at a US state university system network (multiple universities), then they might qualify: https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/

There are plenty of hotel groups big enough for that, but their properties are geographically distributed and I can't imagine they'd benefit from running fibre for their own multi-site network. Better to just connect each property to a local ISP like everyone else.

Maybe there are some exceptions. Disney World? MGM Resorts in Las Vegas?

Why? In my limited experience, it was pretty useful, but again, my experience is limited.

What made it one of the worst products you’ve ever used?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com