11–20 of 163 posts
> "So why do they track it all then? Because Google is not really a search company [..]" What nonsense..
..and, as is common practice with all these FUD articles originating from ddg, not a word about Bing's tracking practices. Incidentally, Bing provides their search results.
> In fact, search advertisers buy search ads by bidding on keywords, not people. It makes intuitive sense, too. If you search for ‘car’, you are more likely to respond to a car ad than something you searched for last week. This keyword-based advertising is our primary business model. The rest of the post is a rant about user tracking.
I think there's a problem with this model however. When the highest bidder wins, consumers and advertisers can lose, big. I understand how DDG has to say this is the best and smartest way to do things because they have to live with their promise of not creeping on their visitors - so they can't use the same analytics that someone like Google has. It's just marketing. But the ads that go to the top should be the most…
Why? That's exactly how it works every where else: Radio, TV, Billboards. If two people want the same spot, the person who ponies up more money gets the spot.
> "So why do they track it all then? Because Google is not really a search company [..]" What nonsense..
Not nonsense. Google isn't a search company. It's an advertising company.
(The vast majority of Google's ad revenue comes.from search advertising.)
Google is a search company that depends critically on ads to exist. It also has an advertising company component to it, but the core value is search.
Otherwise, you'd have to conclude that duckduckgo is also an advertising company. Neither of those statements is correct.
This sound bite quip about Google tries to reduce a large and complex business to one word, which doesn't serve accuracy or truth.
> In fact, search advertisers buy search ads by bidding on keywords, not people. It makes intuitive sense, too. If you search for ‘car’, you are more likely to respond to a car ad than something you searched for last week. This keyword-based advertising is our primary business model. The rest of the post is a rant about user tracking.
Rant seems extremely strong - how about we go with well thought through set of opinions that the CEO of Duck Duck Go is rigorously applying to his product. I personally found his argument so persuasive I intend to set everything to DuckDuckGo again now.
> In fact, search advertisers buy search ads by bidding on keywords, not people. It makes intuitive sense, too. If you search for ‘car’, you are more likely to respond to a car ad than something you searched for last week. This keyword-based advertising is our primary business model. The rest of the post is a rant about user tracking.
I think there's a problem with this model however. When the highest bidder wins, consumers and advertisers can lose, big. I understand how DDG has to say this is the best and smartest way to do things because they have to live with their promise of not creeping on their visitors - so they can't use the same analytics that someone like Google has. It's just marketing. But the ads that go to the top should be the most…
It is my understanding that similar to Google, the first couple of links might be ads, but the rest are organic.
I just did a search for a movie I like - To the right is an infobox with a blurb from Wikipedia + links to rotten tomatoes and IMDB. Under it is an amazon ad to buy a copy.
The top 5 links are IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, a definition of the word, and a trailer.
Seems pretty unobtrusive and on point to me. If I wanted to buy a blu-ray of the movie I'd probably click that ad.
I don’t like how he presented the “creepy” line out of context. It was about doing things that are magical enough to make users happy, and just magical enough to not be creepy. Almost looks like he’s accusing Eric of claiming Google wants to be as unscrupulous in the way they operate as possible without being caught
Eric has said in public it is official Google policy to walk right up to the "creepy" line, so the accusation is not unwarranted given that google operates worldwide, and not every country has the same views on privacy as Americans.
https://www.businessinsider.com/eric-schmidt-googles-policy-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not nonsense. Google isn't a search company. It's an advertising company.
Ask it this way: if Google could find a revenue model with users paying for search with no ads, would they turn off ads? Yes, probably. If Google could turn off search and still make as much money just showing ads? No. (The vast majority of Google's ad revenue comes.from search advertising.) Google is a search company that depends critically on ads to exist. It also has an advertising company component to it, but the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not nonsense. Google isn't a search company. It's an advertising company.
Ask it this way: if Google could find a revenue model with users paying for search with no ads, would they turn off ads? Yes, probably. If Google could turn off search and still make as much money just showing ads? No. (The vast majority of Google's ad revenue comes.from search advertising.) Google is a search company that depends critically on ads to exist. It also has an advertising company component to it, but the…
You're not serious right? Google doesn't run a search engine for the fun of it, they're a for-profit company, if they can pull out an extra margin without search they would do that immediately. The core value is absolutely not search, search is an acquisition channel to bring in customers to click on ads. No one is paying them for searches.
You're right that DDG is an advertising company as well, who also have search as their primary (only?) acquistion channel. However their customer base is specifically looking for alternatives to google and one of the core value propositions of that is to have privacy and minimal user tracking.
> "So why do they track it all then? Because Google is not really a search company [..]" What nonsense..
..and, as is common practice with all these FUD articles originating from ddg, not a word about Bing's tracking practices. Incidentally, Bing provides their search results.
> In fact, search advertisers buy search ads by bidding on keywords, not people. It makes intuitive sense, too. If you search for ‘car’, you are more likely to respond to a car ad than something you searched for last week. This keyword-based advertising is our primary business model. The rest of the post is a rant about user tracking.
I think there's a problem with this model however. When the highest bidder wins, consumers and advertisers can lose, big. I understand how DDG has to say this is the best and smartest way to do things because they have to live with their promise of not creeping on their visitors - so they can't use the same analytics that someone like Google has. It's just marketing. But the ads that go to the top should be the most…
- CPM: you pay per impression (ie how often the ad is seen)
- CPC: cost per click. You only pay when the user clicks.
- CPA: you only pay when the user clicks and does something (eg buys something)
Display advertising (putting ads on third-party websites eg AdSense) is primarily CPM. Search advertising is primarily CPC (or at least this is how Google operates; I assume DDG is similar).
It's important to understand the implications of this.
In a CPC model the system that selects what ads to show you is doing so to maximize revenue. Since they only make revenue when you click a lot of effort is spent in determining the predicted CTR (click through rate) because:
Revenue = # of impressions x pCTR
So it's not just a question of who pays the most for an ad (that's how display advertising works largely) because a $1 CPC with 1% CTR earns more revenue than a $10 CPC with 0.01% CTR.
This is why I have less problem with the CPC search advertising model than pretty much any other model because your interests and the interests of the search engine are largely aligned. You want the results that are most relevant to you and that might be an organic search result or an ad. As long as the ads are clearly display as such, it's fine.
Also with search there is intent. You've searched for something so there's something you want. Who's to say an ad won't be the most relevant result?