Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#191

Post by njarboe » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 6:11 PM UTC

dyeje wrote: post #173

shiado wrote: post #124

I remember I used to do filetype searches for mp3, mp4, flac, etc... and get all sorts of good stuff. I would find ftp servers with thousands of songs and just download anything interesting. I feel like the Google search algorithm peaked many years ago and has gradually been neutered by all sorts of special interest groups who have no doubt harassed Google with legal threats. Google probably doesn't want to censor re…

I wonder if there's a secret, vanilla Google endpoint out there without all the special interest filtering.

I wonder if people working at Google get a different google search from the rest of us. Seems likely.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#192

Post by stingraycharles » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 6:12 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #170

trendia wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? Wouldn't these people need to be specifically from the search team, and not Google in general (which would have almost no control over search)

Google keeps on demoting sites in search for doing certain things. In the past, this has largely been good. This stance against piracy and the stance that YouTube has taken against the principles of free speech mark a trajectory I find disturbing.

Going from “their stance against piracy” to “socially engineer everyone for better using their power” is quite a leap and strikes me as overly dramatic / FUD.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#193

Post by RestlessMind » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 6:15 PM UTC

clarry wrote: post #188

iaml wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be funny to see bing finally reach google search quality not because it got better, but because google got worse.

I just used Google Image search and in frustration switched to DDG because I have no idea how to get direct links to the images that Google presents. I don't think it was always this hard? Or maybe I've grown dumber. EDIT: Evidently you can right-click and view image. I thought that wouldn't get me to the original image since the image as presented in search is smaller in resolution than what Google says the image re…

You know what DDG is doing is illegal, right? Google Images used to link to direct images as well. But then there were lawsuit threats and a settlement with Getty, which forced them to stop linking directly.

If DDG / Bing become big enough, they too will be forced to stop their practice.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#194

Post by CoryG89 » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 6:20 PM UTC

njarboe wrote: post #191

dyeje wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there's a secret, vanilla Google endpoint out there without all the special interest filtering.

I wonder if people working at Google get a different google search from the rest of us. Seems likely.

Maybe, but it couldn't be widespread, or I would definitely think it would leak eventually.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#195

Post by kokx » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 6:20 PM UTC

EpicEng wrote: post #187

kokx wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can actually search quite well in ProtonMail. Though it only searches some email headers (title, sender, receiver etc) and tags. Those are not stored encrypted. But it doesn't search the body of your emails.

>But it doesn't search the body of your emails. Which is a massive limitation.

It is a limitation indeed. I'm not missing it a lot actually.

But if you really need it, you can use the ProtonMail Bridge together with your favorite email client. For me the tradeoff of having my emails stored encrypted by default without much hassle is worth it.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#196

Post by njarboe » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 6:35 PM UTC

CoryG89 wrote: post #194

njarboe wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if people working at Google get a different google search from the rest of us. Seems likely.

Maybe, but it couldn't be widespread, or I would definitely think it would leak eventually.

Possibly. But aren't everyone's google searches already customized when you are logged in to Google. If people at google don't have special options, then how would they know they get a special (ie. better) type of search. I wonder how many people have access and understand the full search source code at google (less all the machine learning stuff)?

In older versions of google, one could quote a full error message of almost any type that came up on your computer and get a very good page describing that that error meant. Now that is not the case. Maybe the internet has degraded and this is no longer possible, but I would imagine it would really help out google coders if they had a system of searching the web for error messages that worked (and quite a competitive advantage if it only worked for them).

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#197

Post by hungerstrike » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 6:37 PM UTC

klez wrote: post #128

hungerstrike wrote: post #85

Are there any apps that perform searches on multiple search engines and combine the results?

You mean a meta-engine? Like Duckduckgo? Or you actually mean an app you can install?

Does ddg use google results? I have read that they do not.

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#198

Post by torben-friis » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 6:41 PM UTC

shiado wrote: post #124

I remember I used to do filetype searches for mp3, mp4, flac, etc... and get all sorts of good stuff. I would find ftp servers with thousands of songs and just download anything interesting. I feel like the Google search algorithm peaked many years ago and has gradually been neutered by all sorts of special interest groups who have no doubt harassed Google with legal threats. Google probably doesn't want to censor re…

a little off topic, but [here's a link to a chrome extension to get the image links back](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/view-image/jpcmhce...).

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#199

Post by tiatia123 » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 6:51 PM UTC

All medium traffic sites depend on google. We had a good running shop. We changed some things.

Nearly one week site down due to server crash (don't ask!). No problem.

New server, new IP. No problem.

Force always SSL. No problem.

But then we switched the shopping cart. This killed us. Traffic down 70%

Re: Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

#200

Post by jacekm » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 6:56 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #178

If content owners want to fight piracy, make content easier to get at a price people are willing to pay. There will always be a certain contingent of people that will never pay for content and will always choose piracy. I personally stopped pirating music when iTunes Music came online. It was much easier to pay $0.99 for a song than to scour Napster,Kazaa, Limewire, and the rest of the p2p software. Now with Apple Mu…

55$ is still quite a lot of money in majority of the world. Plus some content is not available in some regions. I pay for Spotify but for movies (anime in particular) I still need to resort to torrents sometimes. I'd much more prefer to simply pay and avoid the hassle if only I had such opportunity.