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Every Google result now looks like an ad

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Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#231

Post by komali2 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #217
bduerst wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and actually respects your privacy. According to who? DDG is a privately-owned, for-profit corporation, whose code is closed source and doesn't undergo independent audits or validations of privacy.

Their only selling point is privacy, so I feel like they have an incentive to keep their only lifeline going. If they break their promise it’s essentially the end of their business as they don’t have anything else compelling. Most other companies can get away with violating your privacy because they have something nobody else has (either because their product is so good or because of network effects) so you have no c…

> If they break their promise it’s essentially the end of their business as they don’t have anything else compelling.

I'd love to give them credit but without transparent proof of security, all I read here is "they are very motivated to hide any selling of data that they are doing.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#232

Post by dang »

cytzol wrote: post #26

I've been in this A/B test for a couple of months now, so I've had time to adjust, and I still hate it. I've just become so used to seeing the complete URL in green. The complete URL! If you hover over the results, you'll see that they like to take bits like numeric components or the query string out. This is part of Google's attempt to de-prioritise the URL. Their destructive AMP service confusingly shows you Google…

A few weeks ago, I changed my browsing and searching habits purely to get out of that A/B test bucket. Now it looks like we're all in it.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#233

Post by imiric »

I've been using a local Searx[1] instance for web search for a few months now, and besides it needing an update when APIs inevitably break, it's been relatively pain-free.

What I like the most about it is that I get a unified search results page for all engines, which avoids some of the profile bubble, and that the UI is always consistent, avoiding these scummy redesigns A/B tested to infinity and implemented because it increases their revenue.

[1]: https://github.com/asciimoo/searx

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#234

Post by sukilot »

alecbenzer wrote: post #84

0.02: I really didn't mind the change, I assumed it was meant to allow users to more easily identify "well-known" sites in the results: noticing a familiar icon is a lot easier than noticing a familiar URL. This seems potentially good for both users and sites? I guess it's bad for sites that are currently trying to build up their credibility and aren't yet "well-known"? In retrospect, I'm sure blurring the lines betw…

The icons are unreadably microscopic, though.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#235

Post by digitalsushi »

kllrnohj wrote: post #222
cytzol wrote: post #26

I've been in this A/B test for a couple of months now, so I've had time to adjust, and I still hate it. I've just become so used to seeing the complete URL in green. The complete URL! If you hover over the results, you'll see that they like to take bits like numeric components or the query string out. This is part of Google's attempt to de-prioritise the URL. Their destructive AMP service confusingly shows you Google…

> This is part of Google's attempt to de-prioritise the URL. URLs have always been an implementation detail and not a user feature. From the very beginning it was intended that users would follow links, not type in URLs. HTML was built on hiding URLs behind text. Then AOL keywords happened. Then search explosion happened. And short URLs. And QR codes for real-world linking. And bookmarks because yet again typing in U…

I am not comfortable with someone else's domain becoming the de facto front door to my website.

There's nothing I can do it about it, but I tend to hate it.

If my name is Mike and someone powerful calls me Chucklehead, I will have to start answering to that name in order to continue doing business.

But what REALLY concerns me is if a year later, that powerful someone calls someone ELSE Chucklehead.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#236

Post by hinkley »

itamarst wrote: post #2

Perhaps it's worth quoting Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in the original paper on the Google search engine: > "The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. ...we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers. " ( http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html ) At th…

I value input from new coworkers precisely because I often lose focus on things that I care about, often to be replaced by a nebulous feeling of discomfort. There's something to be said for maintaining a certain low rate of turnover in an organization to keep ideas and ethics on the menu.

I used to place a high value on how long people had been on the team, but the two extremely stable places I subsequently worked at were a shitshow, because there just weren't enough outsiders to argue them out of their circular reasoning.

At the boardroom level, the situation we warn about is "surrounding yourself with yes-men". I don't think Page & Brin remember where they came from. And they probably forgot long before they started trying to convert a 767 to be their corporate jet, which was already more than 10 years ago.

( https://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/07/google_bed_plane/ )

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#237

Post by arexxbifs »

SquareWheel wrote: post #210
arexxbifs wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were browsers, standards, protocols, libraries and frameworks before Google and there is a plethora of them now, too, that have no connection to Google. Without the web, there would be no Google, but without Google, there'd still be plenty of web. Heck, if you want to talk inventions, it was Microsoft who came up with doing XMLRPC inside the browser and actually made a decent web port of Outlook using it. That…

>The only other thing they've accomplished Not creating an interactive map of the entire globe? Or upgrading email into a tag-based, nearly-infinite inbox? Or transforming the browser's security model into a multi-process, sandboxed application? It's easy to forget all the things we now take for granted.

MapQuest and OpenStreetMap came before Google Maps, which in itself was mostly tech they bought from other companies.

There were plenty of webmail systems before GMail - Google just had the financial capacity to offer more storage. Saying they "upgraded email" is more than a little bit steep. You might as well say they downgraded it, considering GMail's repeated and spurious blacklistings of completely legitimate domains.

As for Chrome, there existed several browsers before it. Sandboxed tabs is a good idea, yes.

Of course they've improved upon stuff. They've had a lot of money and great minds to throw at their products. There was even a time when I believed in and appreciated their "Don't be evil" motto.

But, as with any technology, it's mostly work done standing on the shoulders of the giants that came before them. For a long time, they've been acting very carelessly with both that legacy and the one they themselves create.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#239

Post by kllrnohj »

sukilot wrote: post #227
kllrnohj wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is part of Google's attempt to de-prioritise the URL. URLs have always been an implementation detail and not a user feature. From the very beginning it was intended that users would follow links, not type in URLs. HTML was built on hiding URLs behind text. Then AOL keywords happened. Then search explosion happened. And short URLs. And QR codes for real-world linking. And bookmarks because yet again typing in U…

Let's distinguish between obfuscating the query parameters, the the path, and the domain. They are different things, and the domain name especially is a major security boundary.

Most of what I mentioned did obfuscate the domain name. Users do not care about domain name security boundaries - that's yet again an implementation detail. An important one, but still not something most users recognize or care about. Hence, you know, why phishing is so successful.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#240

Post by kllrnohj »

digitalsushi wrote: post #235
kllrnohj wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is part of Google's attempt to de-prioritise the URL. URLs have always been an implementation detail and not a user feature. From the very beginning it was intended that users would follow links, not type in URLs. HTML was built on hiding URLs behind text. Then AOL keywords happened. Then search explosion happened. And short URLs. And QR codes for real-world linking. And bookmarks because yet again typing in U…

I am not comfortable with someone else's domain becoming the de facto front door to my website. There's nothing I can do it about it, but I tend to hate it. If my name is Mike and someone powerful calls me Chucklehead, I will have to start answering to that name in order to continue doing business. But what REALLY concerns me is if a year later, that powerful someone calls someone ELSE Chucklehead.

Well then don't use AMP? It's your domain, it's under your control. You at least have a choice here, whereas you can't block most other forms of URL obfuscation when being linked elsewhere.
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