from Hacker News

Disturbing Proof They're Quietly Deleting the Internet

by kk6mrp on 8/15/22, 3:13 PM with 16 comments

• by salawat on 8/15/22, 3:59 PM

  The thing about an actual index is it's reversible, and transparent. You've digested a bunch of information, and if I want to see the least relevant result by some query, that should be doable.

  I would not be surprised if the folks at Google Search have forgotten that pne of the first tenants of organizing information is not to omit it.

  Either that, or they implemented their delist functionality as "force relevance zero, and truncate results before you get there".

• by PaulHoule on 8/15/22, 3:32 PM

  Google's search results have never been particularly that good past the first page. Now that they are stuffed full of ads even the first page sucks.

• by mrguyorama on 8/15/22, 5:56 PM

  Google has openly stated the first "number of results" numbers are literally made up, and have no relevance to actual things. It was way too expensive to calculate for every query when the vast majority of them ended after the first page, so they don't even try.

  Nothing is being "deleted" especially not actively. This is also why you shouldn't use "number of results" as data in research, because it is meaningless.

  This video is worse than misinformation and clickbait.

• by pcdoodle on 8/15/22, 8:13 PM

  Break up Google. They are too big.

• by blinded on 8/15/22, 3:31 PM

  the good stuff stays the not so good get deleted, this isn't an episode of hoarders is it?