India is a good example. I might also point to France. I don't know much about Nigeria except for the murders.

The reason I insist on racial/cultural heterogeneity is to stem the people who say "Norway is super peaceful, why can't America be like Norway?" The Answer is that Norwegian Americans are also very peaceful and prosperous in America. No surprise. Meanwhile, people who come from places with traditions of violence and desperation skew desperate and violent in America. No surprise.

And the reason I insist on no royalty is because subjects have no idea what it means to be a citizen. A person who can't even wrap their head around the notion of legal equality can't possibly understand American politics.

Google should make the best product they know how and when they fuck up they should listen to their users. This Slashdot article is next in a loooooong line of forums complaining about the same thing.

The billions of other users don't know or care how it works, or how accurate the results are. They were happy with 1998 Google and they'll be happy if we get back to 1998 Google.

"Search for what I typed in the fucking box and keep your suggestions and corrections to yourself."

I say suggestions yes, corrections no. I actually quite like the "Did you mean...?" suggestions because yes, frequently I fat-finger a search term. That's fine. But even more frequently I'm searching for something like IContext, and I really need IContext, not Context.

If "understanding context" makes Google's search results suck then Google should stop "understanding context". And it does, so they should.

Just give me results containing all of my search terms exactly as I enter them. That is all the context Google needs to understand.

I'm pretty sure startpage is just a front to Google results. So you get the benefit of no tracking but the results should be identical -- identically bad, according to complainers like me on this forum.

I have previously suggested that they introduce http://classic.google.com./

I want 1998 Google. It worked. It's the only search engine that has ever worked -- before or since, including modern Google.

EVERY TERM EXACTLY AS WRITTEN, it's so blindingly obvious that I can't believe that the engineers at Google can't understand it.

I want to challenge you on that. You have never had any problems just throwing in some extra terms for context?

I was once searching for a username that I encountered on one website, wondering whether it was used on other sites. The username was similar to a popular sports team name, but with a little tweak. It was IMPOSSIBLE to search for that username. Impossible. No amount of quotes or plus signs or "search for exact phrase" could convince Google to search for what I actually typed in. And nor should I have to put quotes or use a special search mode -- I searched for a certain token, so why can't i get results for that token? There is no way to "add extra terms for context" in that situation.

I don't believe that you have never had that problem, unless you almost never use search engines.

Yes, and the solution to both problems is

1. Return results for the exact terms requested
2. Suggest alternatives using a separate link

So why the heck has every single search engine on the internet decided instead on

1. Return results that are totally different than the terms requested
2. Fuck you

????

"Sometimes it takes a little coaxing to tell Google what the hell you're searching for"

This is exactly right and it's exactly the problem. Here, let me propose a solution:

"Hey, Google, you can know what the hell I'm searching for because I FUCKING TYPED IT INTO YOUR FUCKING SEARCH BOX".

Take the tokens I type in, and return results which match exactly those tokens, every single last one of them, exactly as I typed them.

Done. Search engine complete.

If Google really thinks that its n00b users are dum dum then Google can have a helpful link that says "Try these search terms:..." and people can click on that. I just don't understand why it would be completely impossible to get Google today to do the one thing it actually did seventeen years ago. The two features that made Google dominant were no bullshit on the home page and search for what I actually ask for. Now I can't find that second feature on any search engine anywhere on the internet.

I'm having trouble reconciling your comment with the fact that the feature is called "VERBATIM" which means "in exactly the same words as were used originally".

So then tell us, where can we go to get VERBATIM results, if not to a search feature called "VERBATIM"?

It is a perfectly reasonable question to ask: why the heck is it so hard to search the internet for the terms that I actually type into the search box? We could do this in 1999, so why is it impossible in 2015?

I use DDG as my primary search engine, but it's only slightly better than Google. DDG also tries to guess what I really wanted, and it's ALWAYS wrong.

Are Slashdot users the only people in the world capable of typing into a search box the terms that they actually want? I would think that would be a nearly universal skill. I don't mind suggestions for improving my searches, but straight up ignoring what I ask for and giving me something totally different? What software engineer thought that would be a good idea?

You should check it for yourself:

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=%22alpha%5C.beta%22

It doesn't work.

As has already been pointed out, no search engine gives plaintext search functionality. All search engines break up pages into tokens then index the tokens. You will never be able to search the internet for a string of characters which wasn't previously tokenized by an algorithm, and no algorithm is going to tokenize "alpha.beta". You, sir, are out of luck forever.

Over the last thirty or so years, the very rich conducted a successful political campaign to promote a political message to the American people -- and the American people agreed with it. That message is "fuck the poor, let's give money to people who already have lots of money".

Like it or hate it, that is a valid political message supported by just barely less than half of voters. The country is "better" for a voter when the country conforms to the stated political preference of that voter, which means Republicans have "made the country better" for their nearly-half of voters. Those voters want deficit, they voted for it, and they got it. Those voters want poor people to pay more taxes than rich people, and they got it. Those voters want environmental degradation, and they got it. So for them, the country is better.

I'll accept critiques of America from the citizen of any country which doesn't have royalty and does have substantial racial heterogeneity. If you are from such a country, name it, then we'll address American politics.