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Google Memory Loss

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Re: Google Memory Loss

#521

Post by telchar »

malchow wrote: post #71
tomc1985 wrote: post #23

I would bet this is one of those more subtle long-term effects that nobody really saw coming... when Google refocused search with an eye towards commercial results, I imagine it deprioritized a lot of the older, more innocent informational content lying around

This has been my experience. With Google I am constantly asking myself: Wait, what about all that glorious, smart, noncommercial web content that I know exists? Like the Stanford Philosophy Encyclopedia[2] or that economics professor's dataset that I remember being referenced in a podcast a year ago? Google seems to have decided that Wikipedia is the only blessed noncommercial source of intelligence. I guess, if I we…

I feel this way with regard to the many, many forum posts containing the exact answers to questions I want to know. So much subject-specific, often hobbyist information seems to exist primarily on forums yet I almost never see forum posts turning up in search results these days. More typically I'll get (e.g.) five results at variations of the hp.com landing page or some other contentless nonsense.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#522

Post by mort96 »

tjoff wrote: post #233

So from a busi­ness point of view, it’s hard to make a case for Google in­dex­ing ev­ery­thing, no mat­ter how old and how ob­scure. I don't get that line of thought, somehow people have starting defend lack of quality as something expected or reasonable. The whole point of going to google is to find stuff, that includes "boring" old and obscure stuff that won't sell ads. But that is part of the deal, if google don't…

Google's job is to make money, and to grow and make ever increasing amounts of money, not to find stuff. If Google decides that it's worth it to lose some of its customers in order to reduce costs, then it's fair game for them to do so.

Maybe a competitor will come in and steal marketshare from Google by filling the hole Google leaves behind when they increasingly make changes which annoy a subset of users (duckduckgo is probably closest, and I use it as my default search engine, but I don't find it's as good as Google yet in a lot of cases). Maybe enough people will switch to be an issue for Google, in which case Google miscalculated the cost of pissing of that subset of its userbase. Maybe so few people will switch that it's offset by the cost savings of not keeping everything indexed, in which case it might've been the correct decision, from a capitalistic point of view.

This focus on constant growth is the issue with relying on companies and capitalism, but that's a bigger discussion.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#523

Post by colordrops »

Yizahi wrote: post #329
colordrops wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This same AI effect can be seen in the Android keyboard, where _properly_ spelled words will be replaced after typing another word or two because it's been determined to be more likely what you want. It's infuriating.

And they can't even fix a simple typo like this after years of usage - "th8s 8s example tex6". Come on Google, you made that UI, you know that i and 8 are next to each other, you have a database of correct words and probably of typical errors and typos, wtf?! (you even know how to correct "wft" to "wtf" and can correct simple word with number typo).

Yes! Those one-off errors used to be fixed by most autocorrect systems. Seems like whoever wrote the new AI-based systems didn't make a checklist of existing features and attempt at least parity before switching over. It's embarrassing.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#524

Post by pelario »

ericmcer wrote: post #511
petra wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean you cannot bid on keywords with very low search volume ?

Yes Adwords will prevent you from targeting low volume/long tail combinations and recommend higher volume more vague and simple keyword/combinations.

That seems to confirm a feeling: Google (et Al) transformed the internet into the new TV

Re: Google Memory Loss

#525

Post by tzakrajs »

astura wrote: post #60
tzakrajs wrote: post #54

The style used for the links borders on vulgarity.

... Why? Looks fine to me (other than that I prefer underlined links)

Dark red links do not contrast well amongst black text. I still can barely tell what is a link and what is just text. Maybe I am experiencing some vision loss or colour blindness.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#526

Post by brokenmachine »

Double_a_92 wrote: post #267
Declanomous wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> has seemingly degraded into an approximation of a search engine that has knowledge of only very superficial information, will try to rewrite your queries and omit words (including the very word that makes all the difference...) I think the biggest irony is that the web allows for more adoption of long-tail movements than ever before, and Google has gotten significantly worse at turning these up. I assume this has s…

> the AI is probably incentivized to give a correct response to as many people I'd bet it's probably trained to maximize clicks on ads... Just like youtubes algorithm is trained to maximize viewing time (and thus ads you see), instead of showing you videos you'd actually enjoy more.

> trained to maximize viewing time (and thus ads you see), instead of showing you videos you'd actually enjoy more.

How would youtube quantize how much enjoyment you're having, if not by tracking viewing time?

As an aside, when watching youtube on my TV, I don't think there's a way to thumbs up or down videos. Even on my PC, when the video is in fullscreen, there's no way to thumbs up or down either.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#527

Post by dlwdlw »

I think AI works best when you have the AI on one side, and something "dead" on the other, like a pattern. Games, images, etc...

Information nowadays isn't dead like it used to be, it's alive. It have desires and seeks readership, it mutates and wants to spread. This information has its source in human intelligence.

It seems possible it is outwitting Google's AI as the smart people have shifted focus from being smarter than "bad" information to building dumber than human AIs to improve bean metrics and bask in glory.

The core problem has mutated from "what is relevant" to "what is quality". Pagerank and the web of dead info could answer both with one number because the quality signal and the relevance signal were the same and hard to fake.

But if you can hyper optimize for relevance by making content addictive thus affecting downstream attitudes on "relevance", quality is no longer relevant. Current AI is smart, but still childlike and easily corrupted/manipulated. It's a black box that can't be inspected and adapts to change but because it's tempo of dynamic modeling is slower than a real humans it can be "trained" or hypnotized.

Hell, it's probably the core sociopath skill. Being able to manipulate the value/principles system of someone/something else.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#528

Post by sgruetter »

red75prime wrote: post #192
copx wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What annoys me the most is that Google seemingly no longer allows searching for phrases at all. In the past I could search for a specific phrase like this.. "It never rains on a Wednesday in Rockshire" ..and Google would return websites containing that exact phrase. That no longer works. Nowadays parentheses are largely ignored as far as I can tell. This is super annoying because quite often I am really looking for a…

> Google would return websites containing that exact phrase. That no longer works. Er, what? No search engine finds "It never rains on a Wednesday in Rockshire". Results for "It never rains on a Wednesday" with exact matches Google - 6 pages Bing - 3 pages Yandex - 0 pages Duck Duck Go - 3 pages

> Er, what? No search engine finds "It never rains on a Wednesday in Rockshire".

Now:

Google: https://imgur.com/a/tbOzE

Yandex: https://imgur.com/a/LB2qx

DuckDuckGo: 0

Bing: 0

Re: Google Memory Loss

#529

Post by justinmoh »

I think this is a way that google kind of _forcing_ you to participate in contributing to their AI development.

By _improving_ their system, it creates some difference, if no one cares or no one can justify the necessity, then google doesn’t need to care.

The constant increasing amount of information on the web nowadays is certainly a burden to Google. And if such AI can handle 99.99% of what’s matter to user, this AI is already a brilliant one.

After all I don’t think google ever wanted to be an archive searcher.

Re: Google Memory Loss

#530

Post by stevenicr »

Thank goodness people are pointing these issues out. I've been considering some blog posts to collect more info and hard examples of exactly this and similar google issues that are so often not talked about, especially by those who have ties to the big G.

There are indeed many keyword searches in which google is obviously censoring the internet in big chunks. Because they are so opaque no one knows if it's directed by a gov agency, or shareholders, or the vision of some guy at the top who thinks they need to grow up, or some small team that is so hellbent on destroying some things they do not worry about the collateral damage - or maybe it is "machine learning" figuring out if you censor big chunks here and there that people will spend more on ads. Who knows? Very few people, and who is affected? Many people, many who do not even know it. Facebook of all systems is changing thier over algo ways to be better for people and less for the algorythm - will things change with big G now that the last babysitter left?

Google's current path imho is becoming the next yellow pages. Sure they will do fine being embedded on so many mobile devices and being the go to place for crowd sourced directions and locations - but the yellow pages was king for a few days and then people realized it's value to the consumer and to the business was no longer what it was and now who is using yp? More details on a non-google run blog soon. Who can I trust not to give up ip info of posters to tech peeps at G? Wordpress.com? Oh wait, they use google fonts and all kinds of things don't they. Hopefully people can help put this info together with me, it is prime time to create some new alternatives that only do slices of what G used to do well.

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