181–190 of 630 posts
Okay, this is a relatively serious proposal to require Google to allow API access to its search index, with the premise that it would democratize the search engine ecosystem. There are some issues with the regulations he proposes (you have to allow throttling to prevent DDoS attacks, and you can't let anyone with API access add content to prevent garbage results), but it's roughly feasible. The main problem is, I thi…
> Yes, Google has a huge index, but most queries aren't in the long tail. I'm not quite sure about that. 15% of Google searches per day are unique, as in, Google has never seen them before. [1]. That's quite an insane number. [1] https://searchengineland.com/google-reaffirms-15-searches-ne...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The comments he made are not just questionable, they're outright wrong (and a great example of the problem with cherry-picking data): https://www.vox.com/2016/6/10/11903028/hillary-clinton-googl... https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2016/jun/23... (Disclosure: I work at Google, but this opinion is my own)
Google's claim that the algorithm is generic is demonstrably false. Type in "hillary clinton e" and there is no suggestion for "email", type "donald trump e" and email is the first suggestion. Given the news content that we know is out there, that can only be the result of adjusting the results for clinton specifically (if anything, we would not expect "email" to be autocompleted for trump). This is not research that…
I don't think this would help our social fabric, which the article says Google is "tearing apart." Why do we need to break Google's monopoly on search again? Which they don't actually have.
Given that it has previous culprit of that exact same charge was gay marriage it is clearly a meaningless "family values" style euphemism to try to make their complaints seem valid.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The comments he made are not just questionable, they're outright wrong (and a great example of the problem with cherry-picking data): https://www.vox.com/2016/6/10/11903028/hillary-clinton-googl... https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2016/jun/23... (Disclosure: I work at Google, but this opinion is my own)
Speaking of cherry picking, I wouldn't use vox as reliable source for bipartisan data.
Caveat: The author is not a technologists Robert Epstein (born June 19, 1953) is an American psychologist, professor, author, and journalist. He earned his Ph.D. in psychology at Harvard University in 1981, was editor in chief of Psychology Today, He has also made some questionable claims about google manipulating search results to favor Hillary Clinton. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Epstein#cite_note-15 His r…
https://sputniknews.com/us/201609121045214398-google-clinton...
I know Sputnik isn't a good source, but according to him, they were the only ones who would publish the findings without edits.
Okay, this is a relatively serious proposal to require Google to allow API access to its search index, with the premise that it would democratize the search engine ecosystem. There are some issues with the regulations he proposes (you have to allow throttling to prevent DDoS attacks, and you can't let anyone with API access add content to prevent garbage results), but it's roughly feasible. The main problem is, I thi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would assess Google (& FB's) "crown jewel" as, ultimately, their market share, which is related to your points... and causation runs both ways. The user data helps/ed Google create the superior UX, as you say. The reach is what makes Google & FB valuable to advertisers. A search engine with 0.1% of Google's user volume cannot charge advertisers 0.1% of Google's as revenue. Returns to scale/reach/market-share are ve…
'Break Google up' would mean you'd have: * an Office suite / enterprise company (Google Cloud + Docs + Gmail + Business) * a phone company (Android) * a search company (Google Search + Advertisement) * and a media company (Google Play Movies, Music, Books and YouTube) The names would probably become different in time, but you get the gist. Amazon and Microsoft could be broken up much the same way, in neat categorical…
(1) This doesn't actually reduce market share, since each of these are basically different market categories.
(2) Almost all the revenue is from search. That company is the revenue generating arm for the other ones.
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For Google, you missed the part that makes most money.
Most of those products don't make money by themselves, they exist to keep people in the ecosystem, providing more data for the real moneymaker. The biggest blow to Google wouldn't be to break it up into lots of small companies, you just need to separate the advertising business from everything else and you've effectively neutered the monopoly. Google's genius isn't in hiring the best engineers to providing a ton of s…
But my thinking was that if you simply cut off advertising all the products still have massive marketshares and could lean on each other, as long as some succeed. Not to mention investors probably willing to prop up such a massive aggregate marketshare (one only has to look at Uber).
If you 'silo' them, success of one division of previously-Google won't lead to all of them dominating.
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> He has also made some questionable claims about google manipulating search results to favor Hillary Clinton. Despite it being off topic, can we define why those claims are questionable? Is their data proving those claims wrong? Because with all the Google political controversies over the past few years, and given the political donation history of Google employees, it’s highly plausible that search results are manip…
What about Project Veritas? People claim the statements by Google employed were taken out of context, but I've gone back, listened to them, looked at the videos, and it's hard to think in what context anything they said is acceptable. Even if the specific engineers and managers in the video clips don't have the level of authority to make the changes they're talking about, it's still chilling that their attitude could…
Going to go out on a limb and say I don't respect "Hitler was a bad man" and "Hitler did nothing wrong" equally. Individual employees are allowed to have opinions...even opinions I don't agree with.