Google Books has been effectively killed by the last algorithm update

https://old.reddit.com/r/google/comments/1qn1hk1/google_has_seemingly_entirely_removed_search/

72•adamnemecek•1h ago

Comments

adamnemecek•1h ago

The change happened on or around Jan 21. Overnight the results went from pretty good to absolute trash.

Here are two screenshots taken on Jan 20 and Jan 23 https://bsky.app/profile/adamnemecek.bsky.social/post/3mdbup...

They don't do full text search anymore esp for copyrighted books. I wonder if this is not a regression but an intent to give them a let up in the AI race.

jeffbee•1h ago

It isn't obvious why the left results are preferred over the right results.

advisedwang•1h ago

The left results are contemporary, the right are decades old. That includes editions of the same book --- surely the newer edition is going to be preferred by most readers.

jeffbee•1h ago

I guess. That's not immediately clear to me. However, browsing around on Google Books suggests to me that it is the corpus which changed, not the algorithms.

adamnemecek•59m ago

The corpus is still the same, like searching the name of the book will find it, but the full text search.

mystraline•1h ago

Thats easy.

Check out library genesis, Anna's archive, and scihub for content.

Piracy isnt theft if buying isnt ownership.

adamnemecek•1h ago

None of these does full text search.

jszymborski•1h ago

And they are under constant threat by nation states. sci-hub hasn't seen new papers in ages.

greenavocado•1h ago

Build a local index

adamnemecek•1h ago

My problem is finding references I don't know about.

droopyEyelids•1h ago

zlibrary does

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-Library

adamnemecek•1h ago

Huh, the search is not amazing but it will have to do. Thanks! Are there others?

teraflop•57m ago

The Internet Archive supports full-text search on (AFAIK) its entire scanned book collection, even books that aren't available for borrowing.

adamnemecek•16m ago

This is actually pretty good.

clueless•6m ago

I'd wonder if you'd ever consider putting up a downloadable mirror of their full-text search db?

GorbachevyChase•5m ago

Ironic those doing the most for making information open and accessible are the criminals.

al_borland•1h ago

It might be time to update the mission statement.

“Our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”

https://about.google/company-info/

zb3•37m ago

* for us, advertisers and our AI models

ern_ave•19m ago

My guess is that AI training is the main issue.

Data that you can prove was generated by humans is now exceedingly valuable ...and most of that comes from the days before LLMs. The situation is a bit like how steel manufactured before the nuclear age is valuable.

adamnemecek•16m ago

But why would people train on excerpts from Google Books when the whole books can be downloaded on libgen and such?

xorsula1•1h ago

My guess is they detected being scraped and did this as preventive measure.

breppp•52m ago

my guess is that the copyright landscape changed due to AI training, and these publishers won't let Google use that data anymore

adamnemecek•44m ago

The books are still there, it seems like the rankings have changed though.

kingstnap•1h ago

My guess: Text search and indexing is expensive. And you are getting some kind of AI vector search instead.

Which tends to be kind of poop compared to true text search.

abetusk•1h ago

Anna's Archive [0]:

> The largest truly open library in human history

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna%27s_Archive

cft•28m ago

Mirrors https://open-slum.org/

ChrisArchitect•45m ago

Title is: Google has seemingly entirely removed search functionality from most books on Google Books

bryanrasmussen•37m ago

Since I pretty much only use Google Books for public domain books, old magazines, and newspapers I haven't noticed any problem with it. Maybe it's not as dead as this person thinks.

adamnemecek•30m ago

No the search results went from pretty good to absolute garbage https://bsky.app/profile/adamnemecek.bsky.social/post/3mdbup...

mikestew•1m ago

This was addressed in the post, I'm sure you just missed it when you read it:

"But a few days ago they removed ALL search functions for any books with previews, which are disproportionately modern books." <emphasis mine>

Television is 100 years old today

Qwen3-Max-Thinking

Fedora Asahi Remix is now working on Apple M3

The Adolescence of Technology

MapLibre Tile: a modern and efficient vector tile format

Find 'Abbey Road when type 'Beatles abbey rd': Fuzzy/Semantic search in Postgres

Show HN: TetrisBench – Gemini Flash reaches 66% win rate on Tetris against Opus

The mountain that weighed the Earth

JuiceSSH – Give me my pro features back

When AI 'builds a browser,' check the repo before believing the hype

Google AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site for health queries

What "The Best" Looks Like

Not all Chess960 positions are equally complex

Dithering – Part 2: The Ordered Dithering

OSS ChatGPT WebUI – 530 Models, MCP, Tools, Gemini RAG, Image/Audio Gen

There is an AI code review bubble

Things I've learned in my 10 years as an engineering manager

France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

OpenFlexure Microscope

San Francisco Graffiti

Show HN: Only 1 LLM can fly a drone

The Holy Grail of Linux Binary Compatibility: Musl and Dlopen

Exactitude in Science – Borges (1946) [pdf]

Notice of Collective Action Lawsuit Against Workday, INC

Google Books has been effectively killed by the last algorithm update

The browser is the sandbox

Text Is King

After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand

Blade Runner Costume Design (2020)

Scientists identify brain waves that define the limits of 'you'

Google Books has been effectively killed by the last algorithm update

Comments

Television is 100 years old today

Qwen3-Max-Thinking

Fedora Asahi Remix is now working on Apple M3

The Adolescence of Technology

MapLibre Tile: a modern and efficient vector tile format

Find 'Abbey Road when type 'Beatles abbey rd': Fuzzy/Semantic search in Postgres

Show HN: TetrisBench – Gemini Flash reaches 66% win rate on Tetris against Opus

The mountain that weighed the Earth

JuiceSSH – Give me my pro features back

When AI 'builds a browser,' check the repo before believing the hype

Google AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site for health queries

What "The Best" Looks Like

Not all Chess960 positions are equally complex

Dithering – Part 2: The Ordered Dithering

OSS ChatGPT WebUI – 530 Models, MCP, Tools, Gemini RAG, Image/Audio Gen

There is an AI code review bubble

Things I've learned in my 10 years as an engineering manager

France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

OpenFlexure Microscope

San Francisco Graffiti

Show HN: Only 1 LLM can fly a drone

The Holy Grail of Linux Binary Compatibility: Musl and Dlopen

Exactitude in Science – Borges (1946) [pdf]

Notice of Collective Action Lawsuit Against Workday, INC

Google Books has been effectively killed by the last algorithm update

The browser is the sandbox

Text Is King

After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand

Blade Runner Costume Design (2020)

Scientists identify brain waves that define the limits of 'you'