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The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

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Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#111

Post by mynameishere »

irrational wrote: post #84
Ygg2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like your parallel between Microsoft and Google. To me, it also implies Google probably won't ever lose the search crown directly, the same way Microsoft never lost it's OS crown, to Linux or MacOS. However, Windows is dwarfed by the Android install base.

How is Windows OS these days? I haven't used it since the early 2000s. I think the last version I used was... XP? Everyone at my work uses a MacBook. Some of my children are in their early 20s now and have never used Windows. It has always been OSX/MacOS, iOS, Ubuntu, Android, or ChromeOS. I don't know if my kids are typical or not but if many of the rising generation don't grow up using Windows, will they want to us…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...

87.76 percent.

Not everyone is going to pay a massive premium for Macintosh no matter its alleged advantages.

What are the advantages anyway? I used it for a while and came away mystified. Is it all about the appearance? They spend so much effort on its appearance that I suspect that's a big part of it. It does look and feel much nicer than a typical laptop.

From a practical point of view, it felt like playing Candyland. Big silly icons bouncing around, stuff like that. The Unix shell is nice, but you can get that cheaper and better elsewhere.

Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#112

Post by capableweb »

mojuba wrote: post #33

In addition, what's changed between 2017 and now is that back then Google was still admired by the tech people. "Google is evil" sounded ridiculous only a few years ago. I've been ridiculed by my colleagues and fellow engineers every time I said it. But I think it began to change with the introduction of AMP, a growing list of products discontinued for no apparent reason, failures of some of the new products often pr…

> a new perspective on how the information on the Internet can be indexed and searched

I wholeheartedly agree! In order to fuel the brainstorming with some divergent ideas:

- Queries answered/improved by real people (you didn't find what you wanted with "X", now people can suggest alternative search terms to help you find it. Whoever helps, gets a reward)

- Reputation-based search based on reviews (can be networked [as in social network] as well to put "trusted" reviews/hits at the top)

- Expose the query-language for your search engine, allow anyone to build a UI around it, link them together somehow so it's easy to jump between views

- Highly curated search engine, have a team of people insert pages manually after review

- Adjustable ranking. Some people might prefer links to are used a lot on Twitter, or from a special blog they like

Mix/match the above ideas, add/remove some, experiment and deploy prototypes for people to try. I'm sure there are better ways of doing search than what Google has right now.

(if you feel like contributing and adding more ideas, please use your lateral thinking, instead of convergent to disprove the ideas above)

Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#113

Post by Hoasi »

riffraff wrote: post #71
ci5er wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ironically, the thing I would appreciate most is a manually curated, Wikipedia inspired, hierarchical directory. Yahoo?

More like the now defunct DMOZ, I'd say.

> More like the now defunct DMOZ

DMOZ was a good idea, but the execution was biased because curated lists invite partiality. You might build something better only if you could mitigate this natural tendency.

Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#114

Post by sukilot »

Ygg2 wrote: post #35
mojuba wrote: post #33

In addition, what's changed between 2017 and now is that back then Google was still admired by the tech people. "Google is evil" sounded ridiculous only a few years ago. I've been ridiculed by my colleagues and fellow engineers every time I said it. But I think it began to change with the introduction of AMP, a growing list of products discontinued for no apparent reason, failures of some of the new products often pr…

I like your parallel between Microsoft and Google. To me, it also implies Google probably won't ever lose the search crown directly, the same way Microsoft never lost it's OS crown, to Linux or MacOS. However, Windows is dwarfed by the Android install base.

The Google is MS meme was old by 2011

https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-was-right-google-...

Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#115

Post by sukilot »

ci5er wrote: post #47
FpUser wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I would say that web search takes good care of SNR. So far no troubles finding interesting stuff.

My particular need is finding particular stuff. Information. The Google used to be very very helpful. Now I have to McGuyver it into giving me what I am looking for. Now, my Google-fu is ok, and I can do it - but it used to be trivial. Maybe this is an artifact of the "web is too damn big!", but I suspect that Google itself is going through both organizational (not necessarily algorithmic) growing-pains, but learning…

" when they just gave me what I asked for"

was when the web was for hobbyists and companies that could afford a substantial investment. Before the web was 99% professional profit-driven spammers (both automated and human).

Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#116

Post by mmahemoff »

mojuba wrote: post #107
mmahemoff wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to do any kind of objective comparison like this when it comes to SEO. It takes months to see any effect and even then you will have to speculate. You could try to remove GA from half the pages on an existing site one day and see if those subsequently drop more, if you have enough pages to experiment with.

There is some evidence that older pages (>10 years old) drop out if they don't use any of Google's plugins. I think it was Tim Bray who was one of the first who noticed [1] I also found another case of a lot of un-googleable reddit pages from only 5 years ago. They just don't exist on Google anymore even though they are linked from e.g. peoples profiles who commented there. Someone decided that Reddit is not importan…

I didn't read the comments, but the article didn't mention anything about Google plugins, did it?

I suppose it's possible Google used GA stats and maybe even content fingerprinting to determine if certain pages should be indexed, or reminded from the index, and how often to crawl them if indexed.

Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#118

Post by moron4hire »

kgersen75 wrote: post #96
moron4hire wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly how you have to read things to take posts in good faith, which is one of the few rules 'round these parts. Similarly, I'm trying to eliminate the "I think" prefix from writing. It shouldn't be necessary to write "I think Google is evil". Of course the writer thinks that. They wouldn't have written it if they didn't. They can very safely just write "Google is evil".

I was more concerned about his usage of 'the tech people' terms. Like you, I think when someone saying 'Google is evil' he implies 'I think Google is evil'. But someone saying 'back then Google was still admired by the tech people" or "Losing our support" is more ambiguous. Like if all 'tech people' or a majority of them think like him which or he represents the majority. tl;dr: I'm fine with him saying 'Google is ev…

Yes, the implicit "I think" still applies. "I think the tech people think Google is evil".

I don't know how to say this lightly, but taking personal affront to statements of opinion is not a sign of the insult of the opinion of the speaker, but a sign of the insecurity the listener has in their own opinions.

In other words, relax.

Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#119

Post by kpennell »

d33 wrote: post #101
marcus_holmes wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm refusing to implement Google Analytics on my startup's product. Because it's slow, but mainly because I don't trust Google enough to let them put whatever code they like on my page. I'm running into serious flak from the marketing team because they don't know how to use any other tool. GA is the industry standard, apparently, and every site uses it, etc etc. They're even hinting that not using it could affect our…

Surprised nobody mentioned Matomo Analytics yet: https://matomo.org/ It's FLOSS, comes both self-hosted and as a paid service and it's pretty good. Perhaps good enough for your use case?

thanks for mentioning

Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#120

Post by marcus_holmes »

d33 wrote: post #101
marcus_holmes wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm refusing to implement Google Analytics on my startup's product. Because it's slow, but mainly because I don't trust Google enough to let them put whatever code they like on my page. I'm running into serious flak from the marketing team because they don't know how to use any other tool. GA is the industry standard, apparently, and every site uses it, etc etc. They're even hinting that not using it could affect our…

Surprised nobody mentioned Matomo Analytics yet: https://matomo.org/ It's FLOSS, comes both self-hosted and as a paid service and it's pretty good. Perhaps good enough for your use case?

thanks for the tip :)
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