Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#211

Post by rusk » Thu, Nov 30, 2017, 6:29 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #173

mmrezaie wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said, making us pay them for the quality/uncensored search results basically destroys the main source of how they can create insights on data by letting people use their services for free. Google's search business is now a public utility but so far I do not see regulatory systems capable of regulating it without destroying it (catch 22 so far).

Why am I reading a lot of these argument like being a left or right debate. I dont think Google is quite there yet to be regulated. You have alternative like bing, and you have Duck Duck Go, and the latter actually provide pretty decent results.

The discussion is more one of he principle of whether a dominant market leader is allowed to use its position of dominance in the market to influence that market or not. It’s hardly “left and right” to debate this as being right or wrong.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#212

Post by rusk » Thu, Nov 30, 2017, 6:30 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #209

rusk wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's PR monkeys hard at work I see! I find it very, very hard to believe that HN readers would vote such a comment to the top.

We needn't invoke foreign entities to explain why HN voters would upvote it. Smug comments routinely get upvoted. The fault is with us, not shadowy outsiders. Apropos of which, it's in the site guidelines not to bring in insinuations of astroturfing unless there's actual evidence, so could you please not do that on HN? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Apologies all.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#213

Post by eli » Thu, Nov 30, 2017, 6:43 PM UTC

ehllo wrote: post #148

fastball wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like you have a right to appear in Google's search results... I'll rag on Google's poor support as much as the next guy, but only when it's warranted. ProtonMail and anyone else that gets delisted / what-have-you is not Google's client and shouldn't expect first-class support for things like this.

It is not about the right to appear in Google's search results. It is about abusing market dominance to put competing businesses at disadvantage. There are also other running/solved cases/investigations against Google. http://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/case_details.cf... http://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/index.cfm?fusea...

Promising to provide tech support and troubleshooting to every website in the world for free is a lot to ask of a search engine, even if they're the dominant market leader.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#214

Post by seppin » Thu, Nov 30, 2017, 7:04 PM UTC

awestroke wrote: post #88

welly wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they can't win. An accusation has been made, they've refuted the claims with a response, response is dismissed as a PR shield. What are they going to do?

They could stop doing business with a company that has strong links to IDF.

That would be any Israeli tech company.

Or any Chinese company (ties to PLA). Quickly becoming more true in the US as well.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#215

Post by mjw1007 » Thu, Nov 30, 2017, 7:04 PM UTC

tobltobs wrote: post #18

Wasn't this at the same time when ProtonMail migrated their site from a .ch to a .com? I would be thankful if I would be able to get such a special treatment from Google for a borked migration. For most of us it is a death sentence when we bork a migration, protonmail gets help and then they whine about it.

That doesn't really fit the way web-crawler-based search engines work.

If the search engine is working properly then if the new site looks the same to users it ought to look the same to the search engine. If Google's crawler didn't find the new site at all then they need a better crawler.

Maybe this was incompetence rather than malice on Google's part, but it was one of the two.

(An exception would be if you migrate a site and mess up your robots.txt or similar to forbid the search engine doing its job. But evidently that didn't happen here because the fix was at Google's end.)

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#216

Post by reaperducer » Thu, Nov 30, 2017, 7:05 PM UTC

oelmekki wrote: post #111

f_allwein wrote: post #7

[2016]. Having worked at Google’s Search Quality Evaluation team, I can confirm that Google would only manually remove sites from its search results if they violate its webmaster guidelines: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en Of course, there can be other issues preventing a site from showing up in the search results (e.g. site migration issues, accidentally locking out Googlebot in robots.txt,…

I think you nail it, here: the biggest problem of google is support :) This is something notorious and traversal to all its products.

Which is interesting because the #1 way to improve your product is to listen to your customer complaints.

This is Business 101 everywhere except Silicon Valley, which thinks it knows better than everyone else in the world.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#217

Post by merb » Thu, Nov 30, 2017, 7:13 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #80

f_allwein wrote: post #7

[2016]. Having worked at Google’s Search Quality Evaluation team, I can confirm that Google would only manually remove sites from its search results if they violate its webmaster guidelines: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en Of course, there can be other issues preventing a site from showing up in the search results (e.g. site migration issues, accidentally locking out Googlebot in robots.txt,…

"Having worked at Google’s Search Quality Evaluation team, I can confirm that Google would only manually remove sites from its search results if they violate its webmaster guidelines" Or, Google can get around that by repeatedly tweaking the algorithm on purpose to demote specific types of sites. http://graphics.wsj.com/google-ftc-report/ . (long read, but comparison shopping sites didn't violate any guidelines) Ther…

> but comparison shopping sites didn't violate any guidelines

most comparsion shopping sites were anoying and did get ranked for everything I wanted to buy. I.e. "buy television" gave you 1. amazon, 2-6. comparsion sites.

If I wanted to compare televisions I would've entered "compare televisions pricing", etc.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#218

Post by ptero » Thu, Nov 30, 2017, 7:17 PM UTC

zbentley wrote: post #158

ptero wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am pretty sure Google derives a lot of its revenue from advertisers who operate on the assumption that the users see Google searches as mostly efficient and impartial. There can be special cases, but they should not be statistically significant. Thus it is in Google's own interest to keep providing efficient, unbiased search or at least the appearance of it. Break this and the customers will flee to other search en…

I don't think advertisers care about the impartiality of the results, so long as their ads are getting eyeballs/clicks. An advertiser might care if there were another, more impartial search engine that was drawing those eyeballs away, but that seems vanishingly unlikely given the current ubiquity of Google as a household name and company. Sure, DuckDuckGo or whatever might draw some of the more tech-literate or paran…

> I don't think advertisers care about the impartiality of the results, so long as their ads are getting eyeballs/clicks

Agreed completely. But users will (eventually) run away if they do not perceive the search as efficient. There are now options in search. People use google exactly because they consider results good enough. If googling "photos from X" starts returning most pictures from Google-associated resorts and this gets coverage from first tier news agencies Google will see non-negligible defections.

I also do not think Google is likely to do aggressive search filtering, not because this is "not right" but for pure self preservation -- aggressive filtering would be cutting the branch they sit on.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#219

Post by renaudg » Thu, Nov 30, 2017, 7:22 PM UTC

z3t4 wrote: post #12

Don't depend on search for people to find your product. Just like you do not include vesting when comparing salaries between startups.

This is a bit naive in a world where the address and search bars in browsers have merged, and many physical adverts don't even feature a website address any more, just search keywords.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#220

Post by wfo » Thu, Nov 30, 2017, 7:36 PM UTC

fastball wrote: post #206

cjcole wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When they, by virtue of their overwhelming market share, nuke a competitor's product off the face of the internet, whether algorithmically or intentionally, it feels reasonable to me to compel them to provide more detail than "we fixed the glitch". Google does not have the right to avoid being regulated in the public interest.

Yes, but you should address the root of the problem, not all the little symptoms. The issue isn't "Google has the power and occasional reason to remove search results"... the issue is "Google is so big/dominant that when they remove a single result it can have a huge impact". If anti-trust is your concern, make Google smaller. Regulate what % of marketshare they are allowed to control. Don't allow them to purchase an…

>If anti-trust is your concern, make Google smaller. Regulate what % of marketshare they are allowed to control. Don't allow them to purchase any more competitors.

This is one method, but the massive natural monopoly over search and 'gateway to the Internet' isn't something that is particularly well served by market competition, as we can see here. If we break up google, another monopoly will develop. If we prevent monopolies from developing through strict marketshare percentages, companies will hover at the brink of these %s and lobby and bribe politicians to remove the rules. Which is what they have just done in other media markets, recently. So long as you allow the organizations to be driven by private profit, you will have to struggle against the natural market impulse for every company to exert absolute dictatorial control over as much as possible and expand its power, every moment, every year, every election, at all costs.

You should address the root of the problem (capitalism) not all the little symptoms. Require that companies that provide these public goods be run democratically, transparently by their workers as a public co-op. Nationalize them and make them all open source. There are other solutions.