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Google Creates 'Dedicated Placement' in Search Results for AMP Stories

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Re: Google Creates 'Dedicated Placement' in Search Results for AMP Stories

#131

Post by neilv »

katzgrau wrote: post #114
lwansbrough wrote: post #28

I hold the people developing this personally accountable for its negative impact on the web. Each developer’s role is just small enough so they feel powerless or don’t recognize the larger impact of their work. If you were paid to work on this, you are either wilfully ignorant or morally corrupt. Sure, this is only a small loss for the open web. But Google is a factory for small losses for the open web. I hope the pa…

> If you were paid to work on this, you are either wilfully ignorant or morally corrupt. I'm not a fan of AMP, but this is way over the top.

Agreed, I wouldn't single out this move or people, for harsh criticism that should be spread much more widely.

In the context of everything that's been happening with the Web, this move is relatively minor, and you can easily imagine a rationale for it (which involves an implicit "we're the good guys, so it's OK").

Our industry has been an amped-up (ha) sociopathic echo chamber for too long, and there's no longer much reference points for earlier Internet and Web visions of what's good and appropriate.

I think Google's founders had some sense of the earlier ideas, and that's where we originally got things like fair objective rankings, and Don't Be Evil.

Re: Google Creates 'Dedicated Placement' in Search Results for AMP Stories

#132

Post by dang »

lioeters wrote: post #19

As much as I'm often dismayed by the negativity on HN (or, let's say, brutal honesty: "this product is shit!") - harsh reactions are definitely warranted for cases like this anti-competitive behavior. Let's keep raising the stink, I hope the powers that be are paying attention. (Long-time DDG and Firefox user, doing my best to de-Google myself and my loved ones)

It's actually not so common that comments are as throughly negative as that. Rather, there are lot of partially negative comments, the kind where the author often doesn't even realize they're coming across that way. When you get enough of those, fumes accumulate into an atmosphere of negativity that is hard to breathe in. I think this is what leads to an overall impression that sticks.

Unfortunately, this kind of negativity routinely attracts upvotes, and its effect is amplified when it festers near the top of a thread. One thing we've begun doing more of as moderators is routinely downweighting indignant top subthreads to counteract this routine upvote-attraction effect. HN can't live by upvotes alone. There need to be countervailing mechanisms, or else indignation will dominate everywhere, making all threads the same.

Re: Google Creates 'Dedicated Placement' in Search Results for AMP Stories

#133

Post by blub »

jimmaswell wrote: post #125
blub wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, why would it be? All those people working for Facebook, Google all the other companies abusing our privacy are making a ton of money and we're all paying the costs. Why should we tolerate that? They are worthy of contempt.

It's totally unreasonable to expect people to uproot their lives to protest web services that don't even honestly do anything that bad. Are you certain your company never does anything questionable? You better quit and go live on a commune just to be safe.

If a company's expecting to be fined 5 billion dollars, it's pretty certain that it did something bad.

And I don't think that one would have to uproot their lives, just quit and find another job. I hear there's a very strong market for FAANG engineers...

Re: Google Creates 'Dedicated Placement' in Search Results for AMP Stories

#134

Post by everybodyknows »

pixxel wrote: post #20
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #13

I for the life of me don't understand how any Google AMP engineers can bother defending this anymore. A couple weeks ago there was an AMP article related to using real, source URLs, and a bunch of engineers from Google posted in defense. This is absolutely Google trying to dictate what the web should be. If the US had functional antitrust authorities they would kill this.

“I for the life of me don't understand how any Google AMP engineers can bother defending this anymore” Got to justify that google pay check. Mostly to themselves, helps to do it out loud.

Upton Sinclair, circa 1900:

>It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

True 100 years ago, true today.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/30/salary/

Re: Google Creates 'Dedicated Placement' in Search Results for AMP Stories

#135

Post by astazangasta »

ivanbakel wrote: post #25
jostmey wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that people will stop using google if it can’t help them find useful information. Google’s leadership seems to not understand or not care about how the internet works

I think it's highly naive to suggest that Google's leadership is operating in complete ignorance of their own product. This is the company of analytics - whatever approach is being taken is probably backed by a gargantuan amount of data. That doesn't mean it's good for the web, but "what (the most) users want" is Google's strong point. And this is par for the "the internet is now 4 websites" course, so I don't think…

>This is the company of analytics - whatever approach is being taken is probably backed by a gargantuan amount of data.

Take a look outside your window. Have you understood quantum physics yet? No? I guess all of the available data doesn't help you, because it still requires effort and careful observation to glean insights from it.

The same goes for Google. Data by itself does not guarantee anything. You can look at a piece of data and not reach any conclusion, or reach the wrong conclusion. More data does not mean more insight.

In my field (biology) we are suddenly drowning in data - we are producing new datasets much faster than we can analyze them. Our understanding is not increasing at a commensurate pace because we lack the ability to turn these data into useful knowledge.

Re: Google Creates 'Dedicated Placement' in Search Results for AMP Stories

#136

Post by mthoms »

mediocrejoker wrote: post #31

It would be great to see a concise, relatively non-technical introduction to what is AMP and why is it bad for the open web that I could send to friends and family.

If a bunch of developers got together to create a site and surrounding campaign it sure would be great.

I'd be happy to help support it (through Patreon or something?). I'd even donate some labour if it were needed.

Re: Google Creates 'Dedicated Placement' in Search Results for AMP Stories

#137

Post by acdha »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #13

I for the life of me don't understand how any Google AMP engineers can bother defending this anymore. A couple weeks ago there was an AMP article related to using real, source URLs, and a bunch of engineers from Google posted in defense. This is absolutely Google trying to dictate what the web should be. If the US had functional antitrust authorities they would kill this.

I understand Google engineers saying the thing which gives them a healthy paycheck is good. What surprises me are the number of non-Google people who repeat the marketing spin — this is all about advertising, don’t give up your credibility uncompensated!

Re: Google Creates 'Dedicated Placement' in Search Results for AMP Stories

#138

Post by CamperBob2 »

ivanbakel wrote: post #25
jostmey wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that people will stop using google if it can’t help them find useful information. Google’s leadership seems to not understand or not care about how the internet works

I think it's highly naive to suggest that Google's leadership is operating in complete ignorance of their own product. This is the company of analytics - whatever approach is being taken is probably backed by a gargantuan amount of data. That doesn't mean it's good for the web, but "what (the most) users want" is Google's strong point. And this is par for the "the internet is now 4 websites" course, so I don't think…

The thing about data is it only tells you about the past.

Re: Google Creates 'Dedicated Placement' in Search Results for AMP Stories

#139

Post by acdha »

memo_ree wrote: post #39

Seriously, I just don't get these hateful comments on Hacker News regarding AMP. It helps websites load fast on mobile, and users really appreciate when websites load fast.

If they cared about performance they’d simply weight it more in search rankings. I find AMP pages have worse user experience because they require 100KB of JavaScript to load and complete running before you see anything, which breaks with a couple decades of best-practice, including what other Google teams advise. I regularly see AMP load slowly or break because they didn’t follow those good practices whereas sites with good engineering practice load more reliably.

It also breaks URLs – instead of the real URL, you get a google.com link which doesn’t have a good desktop experience.

Re: Google Creates 'Dedicated Placement' in Search Results for AMP Stories

#140

Post by on_and_off »

mattkevan wrote: post #5

After switching to DDG few years ago, I used google search again for the first time in a while was surprised How bad their search has become. Not because it’s not good, it’s still better than DDG at certain things, but because the results have been crowded out by so much junk. There were so many ads, snippets, did you also means, and AMP widgets that there was only room for about eight actual search results. How have…

>for about eight actual search results.

judging from what I understand of how people use Google, it looks more than enough.

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