301–310 of 417 posts
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It seems to be an open question whether letting a corp play benevolent dictator for some timeframe, at least, is a useful thing.
I don't think it can be considered an open question if we're all just waiting for the inevitable disaster. The problem is we're just being slowly boiled so nothing has been done to stop the complete perversion of democracy and slide into a corporate oligarchy.
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> If you don't like their price or approach too bad for you. You are kept out of the game yes, basically true, i think. the article says Google spent more money on lobbying last year than any other corporation... why does Google think that spending money in this way is useful? what does Google get in return? how does Google explain to shareholders that this is not a waste?
> why does Google think that spending money in this way is useful? It's not useful, it's required. You have two choices. You can do the equivalent of what Microsoft did for a long time, and hide in the Pacific Northwest and pray that the Monster in DC just leaves you alone, while all of your competitors lobby to have you destroyed. You will not be left alone no matter what, if you achieve that kind of success, no mat…
On the market end - Google got huge because they inserted themselves as a critical part of peoples' usage of a resource that got even huger. As late as 2013, my coworkers and I would mock the Wall Street analysts who covered Google because (you could tell from their questions on the earnings call) they assumed that the Internet was no longer growing. So all the focus was on CPCs and Google's ability to monetize, when…
Ads. Previously to buy ads you had to call someone, get dinner with some weird guy, make tons of calls, get crappy click rates, trust the other companies 'reporting', pay for impression ads (wtf). It was a mess. You also had to do this with 23 DIFFERENT companies, which were all different . Google wasn't the first, but they did follow through and make a great way to advertise with self serve. Selling ads is awesome.…
Google didn't invent online ads, not even the auctioned ones. Also, their innovations in the online ad space were generally limited to their search-based ad business.
Stoppelman's Yelp is a bad example. I don't want to visit a page that pesters me to install their app instead of showing me the reviews I came to read . If Yelp's ranking has been lowered, good riddance.
It's funny you mention this: I've discovered that Google is injecting an ad above searches for "mapquest" that leads users who make the mistake of clicking on a Google ad to install a browser hijacker plugin before they can get the directions they're looking for. This hurts MapQuest's brand, gives people malware, and of course, conveniently, makes Google a lot of money. They've been doing it for at least a number of…
Because I just did a few hours ago, and its since been taken down.
(I work at Google, but I submitted this report via a funnel that afaik can be accessed by the public)
TFA includes, although not clearly enough, at least one example of exactly this behavior (Google being big hurting consumer's) in their scheme to squash Yelp by inserting their own local results (with big ui) on the front page. There have been multiple studies showing the content on Yelp is far more evolved than Google's content (in # of ratings, # of reviews, average quality of reviews, # and quality of photos).
This is even with Google leveraging it's dominant market share in the mobile space to proactively push users to rate business simply by an AI connecting the dots on location. These nag alerts are not even something that can be disabled without also disabling all of Android location-tracking! Which is very irritating for me as I find many such features (for example, location history has saved my rear several times when I lost items.)
This isn't a fanboy battle like Sega vs Nintendo.
I'm not anti-google, hell I'm totally bought into their ecosystem (have had an Android since the g1, use a Google home, Google WiFi, Android TV, use all Google's office suit, Gmail, etc).
But even if you personally dislike Yelp (that's fine), it is simply a fact that Yelp has superior content in the local niche. Google is intentionally burying a competitor which has a verifiably huge quality advantage in the local review niche rather than improving their product/content enough for it to compete naturally. This IS anti-competitive behavior which IS hurting consumer's.
It even has downstream impacts on consumer's experiences within Yelp itself! Another comment complains about Yelp bugging you to install the mobile client rather than just show the result - this is absolutely a response to the existential threat of Google continuing to use their search monopoly to prevent fair competition. For better or worse it's the best shelter from the Google: at least until they start doing the same thing with Play Store...
This isn't even only a Yelp problem. Why does Expedia, for example, push users so hard to get the mobile app? Because Google has inserted their own travel booking widgets at the top of the results as well! Why is venmo killing off the website version in favor of mobile only? Maybe it has something to do with what you see at the top of a Google search for 'send money'.
The thing that is SO important to stress is that even if you are a Google fan (as I am), or perhaps ESPECIALLY if you are, anti-competitive behavior like this only results in hurting consumers by killing off competition. Turns out competition results in improvements for consumers.
And it's actually a big deal.
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It's funny you mention this: I've discovered that Google is injecting an ad above searches for "mapquest" that leads users who make the mistake of clicking on a Google ad to install a browser hijacker plugin before they can get the directions they're looking for. This hurts MapQuest's brand, gives people malware, and of course, conveniently, makes Google a lot of money. They've been doing it for at least a number of…
Did you try reporting the offending ad? Because I just did a few hours ago, and its since been taken down. (I work at Google, but I submitted this report via a funnel that afaik can be accessed by the public)
I see a dropdown that offers me a single option: "Why this ad?", which of course, just tells me it's based on my current search terms since I have personalization off. Clicking Ad Settings didn't bring me a report option either. I was kinda expecting a button like the "Report Ad" button you can see if you look at an ad on DuckDuckGo.
EDIT: I've bookmarked the below link and will use it liberally against malware.
...And I'll use the generic "submit feedback" button to point out I should really just be able to report a bad ad on the ad itself.
(Note: "Send feedback" has gotten pretty obscure on Google Search, nobody scrolls that far! On Google+, it's always on the left, on Gmail it's on the settings gear (I checked Settings on Google Search first and didn't find it there.)
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I went through a three month-long interview process with them... then they said I did very well and they would be extending me an offer. THen next day, they called and said I would not receive an offer and would not give a reason. THey invited me to interview for that position multiple times over the next couple of years and I finally had to ask them to stop recruiting me for that position... they stopped. :-(
Maybe there were additional reasons, but tbh the answer you gave was very bad and probably would have been grounds enough to not hire you. >"Sure, everyone thinks you're a tech company or a search company or whatever - but Google is an advertising company, and thats it. All the other stuff distracts from the fact that youre just the most profitable ad company." When given the opportunity to demonstrate nuanced thinki…
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I recall one of the questions in my interview at google years ago: "Do you know what kind of company Google is?" "Sure, everyone thinks you're a tech company or a search company or whatever - but Google is an advertising company, and thats it. All the other stuff distracts from the fact that youre just the most profitable ad company."
Well techncially Google is an information company that happens to use ads to fund its mission of making information more accessible and useful.
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Did you try reporting the offending ad? Because I just did a few hours ago, and its since been taken down. (I work at Google, but I submitted this report via a funnel that afaik can be accessed by the public)
I'm happy to be proven wrong that a Googler has accomplished such a task. As I stated in two of these comments: There appears to be no place to report an ad on Google Search. Can you explain where this feature is, because I've explicitly looked for it many times. I see a dropdown that offers me a single option: "Why this ad?", which of course, just tells me it's based on my current search terms since I have personali…
As far as I know, there should be a "send feedback" button on the bottom of pretty much any page. It could be used for something like this, although I have no idea how long resolution would take in that case.
There's also this form[1], which I found by Googling "report bad Google ad" (its accessible via the first result). This is essentially what I did.
[1]:https://support.google.com/google-ads/troubleshooter/4578507...