Yandex is incredible for things that Google and Bing serves up useless spam for.
If you search “watch $MOVIE free” on google you’re going to get netflix, Hulu, prime, Disney etc as the first results regardless of whether those sites even have it in their library. The remaining links are SEO spam that also don’t have it but pretend they do, because the sites that actually do have all been struck or filtered.
Yandex on the other hand… the first result is generally exactly what you wanted in 720 or 1080 with no BS.
I do miss when google had a little footer that said “click here to view URLs that were removed due to copyright takedown requests”.
Edit: And I do pay for all of those streaming services and more, but in Canada if a franchise has 5 movies it’s not unheard of to have #1 on Netflix, #2 on Paramount, #3 on no service available here, and #4 and #5 on Disney or Crave. It’s the same with seasons of TV series: exhausting.
For me, searching "Watch Oppenheimer Free" on Google returns mostly malware and fake media-purchase websites (that will probably try to steal my credit card), mixed with SEO spam about "how and why it's not available on Netflix or Hulu... yet".
To me that's significantly worse than showing no results.
Edit: this is the same domain that hosts documents on the latest laws for cybersecurity (Radio Equipment Directive, Cyber Resilience Act, ...). And the same body that airs strong opinions on client side scanning. The same org that wants to be in charge of a EU wide database of vulnerabilities so it can tell you if your patch management process is too slow. ENISA were informed about these problems over 8 months ago. Meanwhile they are publicly ridiculed on social media for not fixing it.
How else will digital sinners learn only to trust corporate streaming services if they are not shown that the alternatives are OBVIOUS ROADS TO DAMNATION?
That's what I just searched and was able to watch Oppenheimer. The point isn't that it's crummy, the point is that Google or Bing are not answering your query or are answering with junk.
And Yandex reverse image search isn't neutered for copyright reasons either.
It almost seems like Google of yesteryear, but with far more Russian language results.
Google and Bing both changed their emphasis to finding things within an image rather than trying to find similar images. But one is not a substitute for the other.
Google Lens and whatever Bing calls their equivalent almost never find what I'm looking for. They barely function as a reverse image search anymore, and that's a real shame.
"In response to a legal request submitted to Google, we have removed 3 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read more about the request at LumenDatabase.org.
In response to a complaint that we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at LumenDatabase.org."
If you go to that service they'll require an email but you can use a discardable one and still be anonymous to get the original blocked URLs.
I actually still use this for torrent searches sometimes, it just takes a few more clicks.
Yandex Translate is also much better for many languages, especially for eastern ones. And viewing words and their synonyms individually is a huge godsend if you are looking at slang.
I just tried out Yandex Translate on a few words. My only criticism is I find the audio playback too fast. Google Translate plays the audio at a slower rate which I find easier for learning the pronunciation of foreign words.
Yandex.ru seems to be the real deal, uncensored internet (except anything not politically compliant with russia) while yandex.com doesn’t give me that useful results for the movie query. Google.com feels so censored and crippled now.
I know this is old news by now, but Google really is becoming useless. I wonder, are they even aware internally that this is happening or are they so lost in their "Google is awesome" bubble that they have no chance of fixing it in time?
I hadn't even considered using Yandex. Tried switching from Google to Bing this year but results are not much better - half of Google's results are either ads or irrelevant "safe" results.
People spill a lot of characters on here about political censorship while ignoring that the existing Internet "speech" control infrastructure overwhelmingly deals in (a) copyright infringement and (b) CSAM. Those get slapped down everywhere by almost everybody.
Sure? I would assume many of the world's countries do not care about copyright infringements on the internet.
Also much of the existing speech control infrastructure is used to censor what people can see or say outside of copyright and CSAM (see China, Iran, Myanmar, UAE, Belarus, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, Uzbekistan, ...)
searx is a search engine aggregator. searx.be is in instance of it and as i can see the only default general search engine which is on on this instance is google.
Title feels quite misleading. This doesn't seem to have been Google itself going out of its own way to ban URLs as the title suggests, but rather the copyright holders submitting the Google takedown form before the content was indexed, as opposed to afterward.
> “Search accepts notices for web pages that are not even in our index at the time of submission. Nevertheless, we will proactively block such web pages from appearing in our Search results and will apply these notices to our demotion signal."
yes , the reading suggests pre-emptive disqualification of urls from the include allows. i have a hunch that if you somehow had access to that indexing blacklist, it would be all manner of unseemly things.
“For over two decades, we have observed that unmet consumer demand is a key driver of piracy. If demand is unmet by legitimate supply, users will seek pirated content. That is why one of the best ways to combat piracy is to provide better, more convenient, and legitimate alternatives,” Google writes.
Children will be childed by Google. Define: "piracy". Now, who should enforce ... piracy.
Google is a search engine and some other stuff - they should never, ever be involved in enforcement, let alone unilaterally involved in it and allowed to trumpet the same.
Law enforcement does law enforcement and not Google. If I was a policeman I would be absolutely incensed at this overreach into my domain.
> I think the definition is pretty clear in the DMCA, no need to play with words.
Corporations think the definition is applicable to anything under the DMCA. They play with words all the time.
> Sure, Google should keep linking to completely illegal content, correct? Scams, CP, drugs, all belongs to Google indexes, you say.
Sure, Google should keep taking down content on behalf of corporations, correct? SymPy docs [1], EFF tweets [2], product reviews [3], political speech [4], films of police [5], all targets for enforcement, you say.
There are abuses, pretty blatant abuses of DMCA in every corner of the internet. Most monopolistic platforms don't even get an actual human being involved to resolve issues.
Corporations might love the DMCA, but don't act like criticisms against it are unfounded.
I sometimes wonder why computer-literate people still use Google Search. Basically for all search queries I can imagine, DuckDuckGo or Yandex consistently give much better results.
It’s so frustratingly bad. I “-“ a search term and it’s in the title of the first dozen results nonetheless. DDG is slightly better (they say “-“ creates fewer results with the term, not none) and it’s only one in the top 3 say. Say you want to do -order but have switch or rearrange in your search. You’re just SOL on Google. It thinks these terms are interchangeable, related enough, so it overrides -order completely.
I think you’re right. I became computer illiterate by using Google.
A lot of their products are very solid. We have, at home, Yandex Music which is way cheaper than Spotify (and is quite different) and Alice, which is their Alexa equivalent. If you speak Russian, its quite good :)
In general, while I was visiting Russia last year and the year before, Yandex Taxi (like Uber) impressed me quite a lot, too.
Duckduckgo is terrible for most of my search queries, it seems to suffer from the same SEO spam problems Google does. Yandex can't be trusted because of its Russian affiliations, which is quite sad because Yandex is quite good.
I've started using Bing Chat for search queries thst only produce spam results and while Bing lies and misleads in its direct answers, the links it provides to support its statements are usually quite good.
I use other engines exclusively. The only time I have to switch back to Google is when I want to look for places where I can "purchase" a thing. It's very telling to me that that's the thing still keeping me on Google because it's so good.
One thing I'll recommend to everyone: Just set your default search to anything but Google. It takes a few months but your brain, internal search result filter and your overall search behaviour adjust. Google is like an addictive drug in some sense.
When I see people searching with Google or Bing I cringe. I have a computer-illiterate engineer friend who's default search engine is Yahoo - only because some program defaulted it to that and that's where he stays. Sheesh. There's a lot of them out there to be prayed upon unfortunately.
Amazing to see Dogpile still around! Search feels like an oddly under-remarked-upon topic on HN because it's always within the context of a few big names (or else massively criticized by Googists - saw a lot of sneering responses to Neeva and Brave search...).
You got downvoted because your comment is pretentious.
The nuance is difficult, but basically it's because you said "computer-literate". Your comment makes the suggestion that anyone who is computer-literate ought to be using Yandex/DDG, and if they are still using Google, then they are stupid.
A better comment would be "I've been using Yandex/DDG lately and the results are much better than Google!". That's just your experience or opinion - not judging other people or suggesting that they are stupid.
Because there are a large cohort of Googlers and Xooglers here who are resolutely in denial that their golden goose is not dying, and they insist it is in fact fine. Whereas nearly any knowledge worker using Google daily for the past decade can attest to it's rapid decline in quality.
We're discouraged from discussing downvotes, but I have seen a lot of totally innocuous comments get greyed out lately. I'm suspicious that some are deliberately abusing the feature. I wouldn't worry about it.
I downvoted because of what others responded. To put it another way, in keeping with the perceived tone of your post "Basically for all search queries I can imagine", maybe your imagination sucks?
(not attacking you personally, just doing this for illustration)
I haven't noticed any decrease in the ease to find what I'm looking for when using Google over decades, I always find what I need on the first page if not the first result.
Every time someone brings that up, I ask for an example of something they are looking for, and their search query, and every single time I either don't get an answer, or get an answer that shows Google has absolutely no problem at all.
Cmon now. Try to get a result for "UFC stream free" on Google. Now try that on Yandex. Live sports streaming is just one subject you can easily see Google actively censoring the organic results the web would give you if your search engine was information agnostic. Now try to search for anything politically related on Google that is not center-left/coastal US/mainstream power forces aligned, and you will stop believing in any result the corporate american search engines approve you to see.
Are you saying you haven't seen Google return results that don't contain your search terms, or if they do contain the terms they're only in metadata (og tags and the like)? I know verbatim mode is supposed to help with this but afaict there isn't a way to enable it permanently, making it awkward to use (especially on the mobile site).
I've found Google search results to be poor these days but I don't keep a list of the searches that fail, so I don't have anything to share with you.
If you use Google for that query you won't find much of anything. Using Yandex you find all sorts of articles and information. The topic is considered transphobic so it is blocked on Google.
Only ones in the first two pages (or more) are Biden's campaign website (of course) and Marianne Wilson's website. No RFK Jr, no Vivek Ramaswamy, not even Trump's.
Either it is egregious incompetence, or it's deliberate.
I wonder if this is also hitting things like right-to-repair; a lot of useful information like service manuals and schematics are almost certainly in the realm of piracy, and I've noticed they've become a lot harder to find recently.
Early last month, I found myself turning to Yandex in a search for the out of print manual for a 1980s mobile radio. Google had nothing. Yandex had almost nothing. But it was enough to piece together an answer.
This bans hasn't nothing to do with pirate sites that have scams and deceptive design patterns? The last time I visited the pirate bay without ublock origin, I was bombarded with ads with scummy copy like "you won x" or "stream for free now", fake search results, adult ads, and deceptive invisible clickable areas on top of the UI that opened new tabs with suspicious full page ads.
I never followed those links but I'm sure that it will ended up on installing malware or asking for credit cards.
I will understand if the Google Search algorithm de-ranks or bans sites like that, many people totally will fall to this scams.
Interestingly, this implies the people sending notices to google have a fresher index than google does.
Is the pirate bay still a thing, or is there some new competitor? (It’s possible the copyright holders are running their own crawlers, but that seems unlikely and also easy to block)
Readit News
If you search “watch $MOVIE free” on google you’re going to get netflix, Hulu, prime, Disney etc as the first results regardless of whether those sites even have it in their library. The remaining links are SEO spam that also don’t have it but pretend they do, because the sites that actually do have all been struck or filtered.
Yandex on the other hand… the first result is generally exactly what you wanted in 720 or 1080 with no BS.
I do miss when google had a little footer that said “click here to view URLs that were removed due to copyright takedown requests”.
Edit: And I do pay for all of those streaming services and more, but in Canada if a franchise has 5 movies it’s not unheard of to have #1 on Netflix, #2 on Paramount, #3 on no service available here, and #4 and #5 on Disney or Crave. It’s the same with seasons of TV series: exhausting.
To me that's significantly worse than showing no results.
In the EU much of our malware and blogspam is hosted by the EU government itself. We are way ahead here lolol
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=watch%20oppenheimer%20...
https://road-safety-charter.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files...
Edit: this is the same domain that hosts documents on the latest laws for cybersecurity (Radio Equipment Directive, Cyber Resilience Act, ...). And the same body that airs strong opinions on client side scanning. The same org that wants to be in charge of a EU wide database of vulnerabilities so it can tell you if your patch management process is too slow. ENISA were informed about these problems over 8 months ago. Meanwhile they are publicly ridiculed on social media for not fixing it.
It's like something out of Monty Python
And we all mocked Chick Tracts: https://www.chick.com/products/tract?stk=1054&ue=d
Google Lens and whatever Bing calls their equivalent almost never find what I'm looking for. They barely function as a reverse image search anymore, and that's a real shame.
"In response to a legal request submitted to Google, we have removed 3 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read more about the request at LumenDatabase.org. In response to a complaint that we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at LumenDatabase.org."
If you go to that service they'll require an email but you can use a discardable one and still be anonymous to get the original blocked URLs.
I actually still use this for torrent searches sometimes, it just takes a few more clicks.
Youtube looks like very long infomercials.
Finding truth and not 'recommendations' is difficult.
Also much of the existing speech control infrastructure is used to censor what people can see or say outside of copyright and CSAM (see China, Iran, Myanmar, UAE, Belarus, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, Uzbekistan, ...)
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-barbie-oppenheimer-license-da...
Dead Comment
> “Search accepts notices for web pages that are not even in our index at the time of submission. Nevertheless, we will proactively block such web pages from appearing in our Search results and will apply these notices to our demotion signal."
Children will be childed by Google. Define: "piracy". Now, who should enforce ... piracy.
Google is a search engine and some other stuff - they should never, ever be involved in enforcement, let alone unilaterally involved in it and allowed to trumpet the same.
Law enforcement does law enforcement and not Google. If I was a policeman I would be absolutely incensed at this overreach into my domain.
I think the definition is pretty clear in the DMCA, no need to play with words.
> they should never, ever be involved in enforcement
Sure, Google should keep linking to completely illegal content, correct? Scams, CP, drugs, all belongs to Google indexes, you say.
There are laws, pretty clear laws around the world. Some countries deem illegal simply linking to certain sites.
Pirates might hate the new Google, but don’t act like it’s not obvious that they should do this.
Corporations think the definition is applicable to anything under the DMCA. They play with words all the time.
> Sure, Google should keep linking to completely illegal content, correct? Scams, CP, drugs, all belongs to Google indexes, you say.
Sure, Google should keep taking down content on behalf of corporations, correct? SymPy docs [1], EFF tweets [2], product reviews [3], political speech [4], films of police [5], all targets for enforcement, you say.
There are abuses, pretty blatant abuses of DMCA in every corner of the internet. Most monopolistic platforms don't even get an actual human being involved to resolve issues.
Corporations might love the DMCA, but don't act like criticisms against it are unfounded.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31087175
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19663229
[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5409525
[4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3641094
[5]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26082303
When I search for UK law stuff, it comes up on top. Your DMCA seems to hide itself somewhat.
Deleted Comment
I think you’re right. I became computer illiterate by using Google.
In general, while I was visiting Russia last year and the year before, Yandex Taxi (like Uber) impressed me quite a lot, too.
(Local ISP seems to know a lot of what folks look at even when using https and an encrypted bittorrent client.)
I've started using Bing Chat for search queries thst only produce spam results and while Bing lies and misleads in its direct answers, the links it provides to support its statements are usually quite good.
Dead Comment
One thing I'll recommend to everyone: Just set your default search to anything but Google. It takes a few months but your brain, internal search result filter and your overall search behaviour adjust. Google is like an addictive drug in some sense.
It's been years since I last thought to look, but here's a list of current search engines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines
Amazing to see Dogpile still around! Search feels like an oddly under-remarked-upon topic on HN because it's always within the context of a few big names (or else massively criticized by Googists - saw a lot of sneering responses to Neeva and Brave search...).
Deleted Comment
The nuance is difficult, but basically it's because you said "computer-literate". Your comment makes the suggestion that anyone who is computer-literate ought to be using Yandex/DDG, and if they are still using Google, then they are stupid.
A better comment would be "I've been using Yandex/DDG lately and the results are much better than Google!". That's just your experience or opinion - not judging other people or suggesting that they are stupid.
(not attacking you personally, just doing this for illustration)
k, thx for the downvotes :D
Deleted Comment
Every time someone brings that up, I ask for an example of something they are looking for, and their search query, and every single time I either don't get an answer, or get an answer that shows Google has absolutely no problem at all.
So, give me an example.
I've found Google search results to be poor these days but I don't keep a list of the searches that fail, so I don't have anything to share with you.
hitachi mb-h2 data recorder repair
Expected result: pages from [my nickname].com.
If you use Google for that query you won't find much of anything. Using Yandex you find all sorts of articles and information. The topic is considered transphobic so it is blocked on Google.
Only ones in the first two pages (or more) are Biden's campaign website (of course) and Marianne Wilson's website. No RFK Jr, no Vivek Ramaswamy, not even Trump's.
Either it is egregious incompetence, or it's deliberate.
I never followed those links but I'm sure that it will ended up on installing malware or asking for credit cards.
I will understand if the Google Search algorithm de-ranks or bans sites like that, many people totally will fall to this scams.
https://torrentfreak.com/google-removes-pirate-sites-from-us...
Is the pirate bay still a thing, or is there some new competitor? (It’s possible the copyright holders are running their own crawlers, but that seems unlikely and also easy to block)