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The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

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131–140 of 272 posts

Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#131
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…

What about DuckDuckGo or archive.org? Wikipedia?

Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#132
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been a lot of discussions on Google Search quality lately on HN. (eg here: [1]) I wonder how much of the negative sentiment towards Google is partially motivated by subconscious dissatisfaction with their main product. I think I'm probably guilty of that. Others have mentioned that the web environment has changed a lot and I've come to agree. PageRank style algorithms are probably pretty useless in an era…

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

Fun fact... This is how search engines started. One of the first steps in early SEO was to get your site listed on a manually curated web directory. VLIB, the first web directory, still operates at http://vlib.org/.

List of Web Directories, Wikipedia, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_directories

Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#133
post #85

I've always the held the somewhat cynical position that this sort of stuff would push [the interesting] people towards other, decentralized Internets. I'm a big fan of new projects like IPFS and DAT, and GNUnet had a great call to arms on their about page (which seems to have been moderated a little) [1] saying very similar things to the article. Maybe the internet of things will save us after all, by finally providi…

> [the interesting] people I don't think those people have to leave. We just need to collectively realize that, just like with old media , there is a 'mainstream', people who mostly use the internet (the facebook crowd, who are now the bulk of the web traffic), and the more eclectic crowd who care about the internet (largely, the pre-FB mass of the internet). These are two distinct crowds. Considering that the FB cro…

That's interesting, I like the idea that digital natives will have more of a vested interest in caring about the internet, but I'm not sure if it will play out, especially if there continues to be such a strong focus on things like Instagram and tiktok which are largely disconnected from the net at large.

Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#134
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I wouldn't generalize my case nor should you generalize yours. The way I read statements that you replied to is with a silent prefix "based on the experience of folks I work/talk with". If one disagrees (i.e., sees different views prevalent), chime in and say so. There must be a way to express opinions that are between "that's my personal view" and "statistically significant, peer reviewed validation at this li…

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".

If I write "I think Google is evil", I mean: "I think Google is evil, but I acknowledge that it's possible for other fairly reasonable people to have a different opinion."

If I write "Google is evil", I mean: "I think Google is evil, and I consider this an established fact that reasonable people shouldn't be disputing."

These are different propositions, and I might want to say either of them.

A policy of not using qualifiers like "I think" because of-course-it's-my-opinion makes it harder to make that distinction. I don't think the advantage of punchier prose is worth that loss.

(Note the "I don't think" at the end; other people might reasonably see the tradeoffs differently. Note the absence of "I think" elsewhere; I don't see much doubt that there is such a tradeoff being made.)

Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#135
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…

> there's no competition to Search on the horizon This is bunk, and it's time for this myth to die. DDG/Bing/Yandex will list the exact same pages that Google gives as a search result most of the time, and sometimes better ones. If you find that the pointless endless-scroll listing of millions of search results (in 0.333ms!) that Google and also DDG gives you isn't helpful, you can also try Startpage.com. What are yo…

Can you explain your feelings on YouTube in more detail?

I find that I am often looking for information in video form (generally because I am trying to learn how to do some physical skill or to learn about something that is innately movement based such as dance). Although I often use Bing's video search in order to not just get YouTube results, the majority of them end up being on YouTube anyways.

In general I haven't found a good way to search for video content so it seems whether irrelevant whether its on YouTube or not since I cannot find it either way.

Am I misunderstanding you?

Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#138
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…

gaming... that's sadly what keeps kids on windows. and huge contracts... what keep companies on windows.

Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#139
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who think carefully then call Google 'evil' may as well be the same people who used to call it 'good'. Corporations aren't good or evil. They are powerful. Being good is many things, but a key part of that is restraining the self from acting improperly. Corporations can't do that, they will sooner or later do whatever makes money. Or they get replaced sooner or later by a corporation that will. At best, there…

> Corporations aren't good or evil. They are powerful That meant to imply that google is neutral? The strong nuclear force is powerful that doesn’t mean anything on its own. It can be harvested for good electricity or bad bombs. Of course the consensus on this is almost universal, the consensus on google is much more ambivalent. Corporations may well be good or evil

Yes, Google is not neutral, it definitely have a clear, intentional agenda. But it's non-moral (not imoral, or evil) as are all corporations. It just uses it's power as a way to complete it's objectives. This is way different from being neutral.

Re: The Web Began Dying in 2014 (2017)

#140
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…

"back then Google was still admired by the tech people" "Losing our support" why do you generalize 'tech people' as 'we' ? I'm in tech and I've been for 30+ years. I still admire Google. Sure some tech people don't like Google anymore or even never have. But I wouldn't generalize my case nor should you generalize yours. And it's not all or nothing: I want to believe most tech people are mature and educated enough to…

"1. for the money, 2. for the..." is how i understand the "no evil" thing. just like people used to write micro$oft. it's funny i have not seen that one in a while. but yea, the most important factor is perhaps money.
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