Comment by bee_rider
2 years ago
> So I am left to wonder why there are so many posts about the sentiment that search got worse without anyone ever verifying that claim.
I suspect it has gotten worse, so posts complaining about it resonate. But, it is not really a huge problem, and anyway it isn’t as if there’s much I can do about it, so I’m not going to bother collecting statistically valid data.
I think this is generally true about a lot of things. We should be OK with admitting that we aren’t all that data-driven and lots of our beliefs are based on anecdotes bouncing around in conversations. Lots of things are not really very important. And IMO we should better signal that our preferences and opinions aren’t facts; far too many people mix up the two from what I’ve seen.
When it comes to human psychology what we believe tends to be more important than what is when it comes to future predictions of our actions. If people think search sucks then it's likely they'll use less of it in the future and it opens up companies like Google for disruption.