I HATE GOOGLE

https://support.google.com/news/answer/1638638

now if you want to search for articles older than 30 days, your only options are to do a date-filtered web search (which doesn't limit your results to news sources) or to do a site-specific search for Google News (which yields only a fraction of the expected results — why only 73 hits for site:google.com/newspapers 'scott stapp'?). the archive apparently still exists, but there's no longer an effective way to search it, which is just baffling.

was "working" on a Google Docs spreadsheet when I got this message:

Pardon the interruption
Copying and pasting requires the free Google Drive web app. This lets us access your clipboard so you can cut, copy and paste.

like, for fuckin' real?

yeah, that's some bullshit. for some reason I thought it was no longer possible to use Google Docs at all unless you had the software installed, but it's not something I use regularly.

my latest gripe is that they removed the blog and discussion searches from the main search page (they used to be under the More dropdown menu). the blog search is still accessible if you click Apps -> More -> Even More in the upper righthand corner, but the discussion search isn't listed anywhere, although you can still access it at https://www.google.com/?tbm=dsc. I don't understand why Google keeps demoting/deleting useful search tools.

apparently Google disabled the discussion search entirely over the past few days. now it just says "Your search could not be completed with the requested search options. Reset search tools" when you try to search for something. c'mon google, sort it out!

now you get a 404 error when you go to google.com/blogsearch or follow the Blog Search link on the Google Products page. you can still access the blog search function at http://www.google.com/?tbm=blg, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time before they get rid of it entirely.

unregistered doing god's work bumping this thread tbh

Old complaint, but Google, this isn't the same web search as the one I'm attempting to enter.

http://i.imgur.com/cV5gGK1.png

grievance #9764390463: they finally got rid of the old google maps layout. now when you select the "return to classic google maps" option, you get a layout called Lite Mode, which suffers from most of the drawbacks of the default layout: the map panel is laggy and slow to load, the directions sidebar is minimized by default, the sidebar layout is ugly and inconvenient (the font size is too big for the narrow input fields, and you have to click the back button to revise your directions), there's no way to rearrange the order of your via points, the Get Directions button is gone (now it automatically gives you a new set of directions every time you add a new via point), and you can't print the directions without also printing the map. worst of all, the steps in the directions are collapsed by default, so you have to click every little > just to see the full list. once again, google has replaced a decent, fully functional UI with sleek, stylish, inoperable garbage. I hate google.

I've gotten to the point where I use Google only for the Street View, but Bing Maps for everything else.

I'll also add Google's still the one to use to see boundaries of a county or city, but that's it.

hmm, it never even occurred to me to use bing maps. but it seems to be a faithful ripoff of the old google maps layout (weird/blurry cartography aside), so I'll give it a try.

now you get a 404 error when you go to google.com/blogsearch or follow the Blog Search link on the Google Products page. you can still access the blog search function at http://www.google.com/?tbm=blg, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time before they get rid of it entirely.

― unregistered, Wednesday, August 13, 2014 11:56 PM (1 year ago)

I guess I'm the only one who cares about this anymore, but google discontinued its blog search operator as of December 2015, so google.com/?tbm=blg now just redirects to the main google search engine. why do you keep sabotaging yourself, google, why?

I had never heard of/used it.

it was a godsend during the mp3 blog era

google jettisons another useful product, update #6395744:

https://www.google.com/movies/about/

Thanks for stopping by.

Google Showtimes was discontinued on November 1, 2016. You can now discover showtimes on the search results page by searching for the name of the movie you want to see or try searching for the word “movies” to discover what’s in theaters.

Sincerely,

The Google Showtimes team

so instead of navigating to a single webpage with all the showtimes for all the theaters in your area, you now have to either google a movie title individually or google the word 'movies', which produces a clunky sidescrolling list of titles that you can click on one by one to display showtimes. is this 'progress'?

Didn't realize this was a separate product, just thought it was one of those google.com tweaks they did for stuff like sports schedules

neat, it's no longer possible to search for images within a narrow size range unless you click through to advanced image search. until recently the GIS toolbar included a wide range of options (larger than 800x600, larger than 1024x768, etc.), but now it's been pared down to large/medium/icon, which is the way it was in...idk, 2005? the exact size filter has also been removed for the toolbar, though you can get the same results by manually appending "imagesize:666x666" to your search. the "face" and "photo" options have also been removed from the image type dropdown menu, and the "full color" option has been removed from the color menu. great work, dudes: I can't wait to see what basic search feature you'll be eliminating next.

Yes, I noticed this. Also they have now sabotaged verbatim search to make it unusable, so have had to disable my previously lifesaving "default to verbatim" plugin. Switching to duckduckgo, which isn't perfect by any means, but it will do.

I don't use duckduckgo very often, but from what I've seen it's even worse than google with regard to verbatim searches -- i.e. I'll put two phrases in quotes and the very first result might only include one of the terms, whereas with google at least the first few results will include both terms. maybe I need to mess around with it more, idk. on the plus side duckduckgo seems to pull up a smaller proportion of junk/spam/content farm pages than google does

Problem with google verbatim now is poor quality of results, it gives you weird wikipedia mirrors and results I obviously do want go missing completely, not sure if it has been left to fester or if this a ploy to stop people using it or a bit of both.

Image search has been unusable for years now, bing is better but is also starting to get worse

why do you keep sabotaging yourself, google, why?

I was wondering this as well. The google ‘news’ function isn’t as good as it used to be searching historical news stories. They’ve also discontinued google trips, which enabled you to have reservations and maps and guides stored in a single app.

I was wondering if they get nervous about being challenged on competition grounds if their wider products disrupt other markets too successfully.

So many things you can't do on an Android app but can do on a desktop. Eg Gmail - download all attachments to drive, Google Photos - I had this all set up nicely so I could access my husband's photos via Drive and now they stopped syncing so I can't just view 'his' photos on my phone without a load of faff, whereas on PC I can go to 'sharing partners' or w/ever.

I have moaned about Google Maps before but usually when I open the app on my phone it tells me I need location switched on to continue, but I don't, and this takes about three extra clicks to get rid of.

Lately, about ... 35% .... of the time I search for something on Google, I get a screen that just looks like this:

https://i.imgur.com/9O69RU9.png

is there any way to display the number of results for a Google Books search, or has that feature been removed for good?

it probably doesn't matter anyways, since the results are limited for no discernible reason. if you search for "tip of my tongue" without a date filter, you get 10 pages of results, but it gives you a "your search did not match any book results" prompt if you go beyond page 6. if you search for the same term but limit the date range to 2010 to 2013, you get 5 pages of results and a "did not match" prompt after page 4. and for some reason the number of results will vary depending on whether you sort them by date or relevance. I don't think it was always that bad, but maybe I just have a rosy view of the past

have you tried
https://books.google.com/advanced_book_search
?

thanks -- the advanced search does have more features, but unfortunately you still get the same limited number of results when you search for a term within the text of the books

nice , it looks like google just crippled another of its products :D:D:D:D:D

until recently the results page for google groups (google's usenet search engine) looked like this:

https://i.imgur.com/qurZwr3.jpg

each result would have the subject line and group name on one line, and beneath that would be a decent-sized snippet containing your search terms, similar to the regular google web search

in the new layout, the subject lines, group names, and snippets are crammed into a single line for each result:

https://i.imgur.com/yRD6Uy4.jpg

some of the snippets are as short as five words long and don't even include the search terms, making it difficult to determine which results are relevant without clicking through to the messages. until recently you could revert back to the "classic" (i.e. functional) layout, but that's no longer possible

it's kinda sad that I've been bumping this thread for eight years, but the hits just keep on comin'