Comments on: Why Does Google Obscure Searches for Content Licensed for Re-use?

By: Heather

Heather — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:22:22 +0000

I’m rather frustrated with various other Google “improvements” these days. First, they dumped all of the Google Reader items that I had shared. Then then came out with that stupid drop-down menu to access your other Google tools (Docs, Reader, etc.), but Reader is way down the list, while things I don’t or rarely use are at the top / on the first bar, and Sites isn’t listed at all. Makes me wonder if those who at one time advised about usability at Google have all left.

By: Alan Levine aka CogDog

Alan Levine aka CogDog — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:46:15 +0000

What has disappeared? Google?

By: DS

DS — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 13:44:05 +0000

This now appears to have disappeared completely.

Anyone any ideas?

By: Finding Images | doug – off the record

Finding Images | doug – off the record — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 10:00:33 +0000

[...] was reading Alan Levine’s blog (@cogdog) lately and he came up with an interesting observation. While people have been cooing [...]

By: Gia

Gia — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 10:24:01 +0000

… or you could just by-pass all those Google hoops by using CC Search in Firefox instead. For other browsers there’s always http://search.creativecommons.org.

Having said that, I noticed the other day, that the CC site is en route to being “improved” towards uselessness, too.

If it ain’t broke, fix it anyway!

By: Michele

Michele — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 17:44:23 +0000

As a post-secondary instructor who teaches a digital writing class, I was surprised at this change, which seemed to happen either over summer or early in fall. I am used to telling my students to use the Advanced Search feature to find images labelled for reuse, and yet when I told them to do so at the beginning of the Fall term, they objected since they couldn’t find the Advanced Search feature.

You can also sometimes get the advanced search to appear by clicking the search button with no search terms entered (though oddly, sometimes this does not work) and you can get there by adding “advanced image search” to the end of the image search page.

I agree this is annoying, and further, it makes it very difficult to get students to comply with copyright and image use law in their assignments. Disappointing move, Google.

By: Alan Levine aka CogDog

Alan Levine aka CogDog — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 21:53:49 +0000

Thanks Jim- that is totally intuitive ;-)

It does put a statement on how important this is to google.

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 21:41:44 +0000

Probably doesn’t lessen the total clicks but maybe a bit more straightforward: once you’re on the google search page you can also hit the gear button at the upper right of everything; underneath that is “advanced search” – seems a bit quicker than going first to the basic version.

By: Tori

Tori — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 16:32:17 +0000

Ah, yet another knot in Google’s noose – the one they are using to hang themselves. For years I used gmail, until their recent changes. I’ve now switched to Apple’s Mail app, before they force the switch to the new interface upon me. It seems like everything they’re doing now is designed to hide, blind or otherwise obfuscate good content.