The Mosaic browser (1993) had full text history search.
We then got a bookmark system that was every bit as terrible as a web directory.
It stayed that way. The delicious search revenue made organizing websites uninteresting. That obscure website you enjoyed a decade ago but don't even remember, they had lots of traffic like you. No point updating or keeping it online. You can't have rss in Firefox but here is a Facebook like button in your address bar in stead.
I've tried to maintain the bookmark menu but I rarely use it since everything is dead. Why aren't browsers storing a text version of the bookmark? Did people in 1993 have more resources than us? Should I be afraid it grows to a few GB over the decades?
A good few dead websites have a backup some place but there is no automation to find it. If you had a string of text from a page you might be able to search for it. If the page found is highly similar we might automate the process to have alternative location for bookmarks with a nice warning dialog.
Bookmarks died because most humans are allergic to having to do bookkeeping and cleanup tasks that are incidental to what they really want to do.
We see that over and over again, in a bunch of non-tech fields. My kids never want to clean up their toys; they will pull out new ones, but it is a struggle to get them into the habit of putting the old ones away first. My parents used to keep a notebook with every gas fill-up they made; nobody born after about 1990 does that anymore. We were taught how to balance a checkbook in elementary school; basically nobody does that anymore, we put everything on autopay and if you are diligent you check a statement or import it into Quicken once a month (most people don't even do that, they have no idea what they are spending and predictably, usually no money left over). GMail succeeded because instead of putting your mail in folders, you just leave it in one lump with Google and rely on full-text search. A lot of Zoomer computer users don't even know what files and folders are, they just use apps, which take them straight to what they want to do and don't offer things like possession of your own data.
Back in the (~early 2010s) days when Google still allowed internal innovation, there were recurrent demos produced by engineers of full-text search over your web history, though of course it was your web history as stored by Google and none of this was local. It never became a product, largely because users are too lazy to go to a separate search product just for your history, or because they're too lazy to check a separate box saying "Search my history". Instead I think web history became a ranking input to general search and it would mix in results that you frequently visited to the general results, which honestly I think was a more useful approach.
That and google had a major interest in killing bookmarks. Bookmarks were actively competing with google search traffic, so they put in a lot of effort to get you to stop using them. Why bookmark something when you can just search for it.
Eh, it's true that Google's incentives aren't really aligned with bookmarking tools, but the magnitude of the effect is much less than you're thinking of. Basically 100% of Google's revenues come from commercial-seeking queries, cases where the user has a purchasing intent before they came to the search engine. All of the non-commercial uses - coding, random facts, research, education, navigational queries, etc - are just loss-leaders so that your fingers automatically reach for Google when you're searching for lawyers, contractors, home-improvement fixtures, apps, furniture, flowers, restaurants, consumer electronics, etc. Google (of the 2010s certainly, but also true now) considered Amazon to be its primary competition, not Yahoo or del.icio.us.
They put precisely zero effort into killing bookmarks. I know because I was there, and probably would've been tasked with doing it. Well, that and because bookmarks still exist and I can still use them. They also put zero effort into improving bookmarks or making them easier for you to use, but it's death by inaction and consumer choice, not by anything Google did.
I don't really understand why they were able to exist as they do and not lose users. I have not had Chrome for over a decade, I use Gmail exclusively for my actual real identity, which I don't recall the last time I used - I can only access my Gmail from a tablet I never use. I used to use Google search, when all other options failed - but these days, google is the first to fail, I literally do not remember the time I used it.
It is a genuinely novel experience for me, to see any sort of ad on the internet - that is not hyperbole.
I am not as capable as so many of the people who frequent HN, tbh - very little of what I do is hard, why do all of you live as you do??
I don't understand at all.
Think of some very fringe group of 0.1%, which you question from time to time how they function/exist/for what purpose. That’s basically how general populace looks at people who go through efforts of de-Googlifying. Stuff that matters to you (privacy, owning your data and etc.) does not matter to super majority of the people, especially outside of the tech circles.
I’m somewhat in-between of two extremes, but in grand scheme of things I don’t really care, as I have completely different priorities in life. Convenience services enable me to focus on those priorities, and I don’t really care about all other stuff to a specific degree.
I’ve been lucky enough to see how people from every walk of life interact with the Internet, and realized the way I function is extremely different. To them, I am the “flat earth weirdo and do stuff differently than the others”.
To give another example - I’m expecting people in HN type about 100 words per minute on average because of our general exposure to coding, typing, internet and etc. That puts us to 99th percentile. Average person does not live like us, nor cares about it.
Frankly I just don’t care that much, I hate Google and llms have mostly replaced the search but after work I want to spend time with family and do hobbies and degoogling is a nice to have that is nowhere near the top of my priorities list.
econ · · focus · HN ↗
We then got a bookmark system that was every bit as terrible as a web directory.
It stayed that way. The delicious search revenue made organizing websites uninteresting. That obscure website you enjoyed a decade ago but don't even remember, they had lots of traffic like you. No point updating or keeping it online. You can't have rss in Firefox but here is a Facebook like button in your address bar in stead.
I've tried to maintain the bookmark menu but I rarely use it since everything is dead. Why aren't browsers storing a text version of the bookmark? Did people in 1993 have more resources than us? Should I be afraid it grows to a few GB over the decades?
A good few dead websites have a backup some place but there is no automation to find it. If you had a string of text from a page you might be able to search for it. If the page found is highly similar we might automate the process to have alternative location for bookmarks with a nice warning dialog.
nostrademons · · focus · HN ↗
We see that over and over again, in a bunch of non-tech fields. My kids never want to clean up their toys; they will pull out new ones, but it is a struggle to get them into the habit of putting the old ones away first. My parents used to keep a notebook with every gas fill-up they made; nobody born after about 1990 does that anymore. We were taught how to balance a checkbook in elementary school; basically nobody does that anymore, we put everything on autopay and if you are diligent you check a statement or import it into Quicken once a month (most people don't even do that, they have no idea what they are spending and predictably, usually no money left over). GMail succeeded because instead of putting your mail in folders, you just leave it in one lump with Google and rely on full-text search. A lot of Zoomer computer users don't even know what files and folders are, they just use apps, which take them straight to what they want to do and don't offer things like possession of your own data.
Back in the (~early 2010s) days when Google still allowed internal innovation, there were recurrent demos produced by engineers of full-text search over your web history, though of course it was your web history as stored by Google and none of this was local. It never became a product, largely because users are too lazy to go to a separate search product just for your history, or because they're too lazy to check a separate box saying "Search my history". Instead I think web history became a ranking input to general search and it would mix in results that you frequently visited to the general results, which honestly I think was a more useful approach.
bognition · · focus · HN ↗
nostrademons · · focus · HN ↗
They put precisely zero effort into killing bookmarks. I know because I was there, and probably would've been tasked with doing it. Well, that and because bookmarks still exist and I can still use them. They also put zero effort into improving bookmarks or making them easier for you to use, but it's death by inaction and consumer choice, not by anything Google did.
Ajakks · · focus · HN ↗
tokioyoyo · · focus · HN ↗
I’m somewhat in-between of two extremes, but in grand scheme of things I don’t really care, as I have completely different priorities in life. Convenience services enable me to focus on those priorities, and I don’t really care about all other stuff to a specific degree.
I’ve been lucky enough to see how people from every walk of life interact with the Internet, and realized the way I function is extremely different. To them, I am the “flat earth weirdo and do stuff differently than the others”.
To give another example - I’m expecting people in HN type about 100 words per minute on average because of our general exposure to coding, typing, internet and etc. That puts us to 99th percentile. Average person does not live like us, nor cares about it.
edgyquant · · focus · HN ↗