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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

#371

Post by coldtea »

SquareWheel wrote: post #88
ramraj07 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we're all poorer for it. They have taken a public service and molded into something that makes money for them and only for them. And all the while (maybe gradually) they've masqueraded as some benevolent philanthropy. The day "don't be evil" came off their motto is the day they conceded they are evil. At least as evil as any publicly trading company has to be.

Releasing hundreds of open-source tools and donating protocols to standards bodies is really not what I would consider evil. The web is a thousand times better now than it was ten years ago. And despite the frequent misinformation, "Don't be evil" has never once left their code of conduct.

>Releasing hundreds of open-source tools and donating protocols to standards bodies is really not what I would consider evil. The web is a thousand times better now than it was ten years ago.

Is it really? I only see small marginal improvements in the technical side, and lots of losses in the freedom, privacy, quality of treatment as a customer or user, etc, side, a lot of them because of Google.

>And despite the frequent misinformation, "Don't be evil" has never once left their code of conduct.

Yes, it just left their actual conduct.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#372

Post by basch »

fgjhghjghjkghj wrote: post #224
basch wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean thats not entirely true. They build and maintain HTTP3 and Chrome (oversimplification, I know) They do somewhat control the fundamental elements that make the web work. Blink/V8 is obviously more powerful than Webkit, Gecko, as far as the market is concerned.

I didn't know that Chrome web browser is fundamental of web :D

Blink powers Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi etc. The only competition with even a single digit of marketshare is Webkit and Gecko.

If Blink and Google both implement a feature it becomes a defacto web standard.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#373

Post by neodymiumphish »

basch wrote: post #11

The FTC has spoke on this before. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/business-blog/2013/06/... I believe nearly all the search engines are still guilty of this one. I also think firms should be able to buy "blank space." For example facebook or amazon could pay NOT to have an ad above their result. Maybe they already do, I dont see an ad when I search facebook, however I do see an ad for amazon above the top amazo…

I worry about the implications of the blank space idea. For example, if I owned coolstuff.com, when should I expect for my standard search result to be shown below the "blank space". Today, if someone searched "cool stuff", my site shows up as the top search result, but my arch-nemesis, the owner of neatstuff.com, has an ad tailored to that query. Would his ad go away since mine is the top search result for "cool stuff"? Similarly, if my site is preferable to Google enough that my site shows up every time someone searches for something like "cool shit" or "awesome things", would I also benefit from this "blank space" program, at the expense of the owners of coolshit.com and awesomethings.com?

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#374

Post by michaelpetan »

I have some experience with user experience and navigation design. The new google search experience is horrible. The ads dominate, the scale seems clumsy and the layout and spacing seems awk-wierd. I was on the launch of NEW COKE way back when,Seems like a repeat, Coke did a focus group, taste test and asked "is this new coke was good or better than the old coke." A majority said better, but they did not know the OLD VERSION (classic ) would be no longer available. Deleted from memory. The result was a consumer response that i think has yet to be equaled. Old vs New, if they knew it was an either or the vote would have been different. I appreciate Hacker News and the intelligence that is emitted.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#375

Post by reroute1 »

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.

Isn't google already the front door to everyone's website? Are the amp URLS really crazy? If you have a .com address is that roughly the URL in search results?

Your link is being shared from Google's search results and their application, so you might not like it but they have every right to control how it's displayed. Is it difficult to accept traffic from an AMP link? Are there technical downsides besides being called a name you don't want?

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#376

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

> Their destructive AMP service confusingly shows you Google's domain instead of the website's

No, it doesn't. It's actually served from Google's URL, but it (the AMP service) shows you the original site URL (well, it shows the domain by default but that's a button that expands to the URL if you click it.)

Your address bar shows you the Google URL, but that's not misleading, either, since what the address bar has always shown is what location content is being served from, not a content identifier distinct from the mechanics of content distribution.

> they can't fix that without losing out on tracking

Nah, they could track of they worked like a classic CDN

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#377

Post by therealmarv »

0xff00ffee wrote: post #316
LeftHandPath wrote: post #260

I've been using duckduckgo and bing for a while now. Google is just a fallback.

What does DDG use for an algorithm? Originally Google was just using pagerank but that was too easy to game by SEO. This means DDG needed to address this, and apparently they have (e.g, search for 'favicon' like the post). How long can we rely on DDG staying neutral in their algorithm?

It's a nicer skin with better privacy around mainly this search engine: bing.com from Microsoft.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#378

Post by [deleted] »

baq wrote: post #366
bduerst wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference being that you pay magnitudes less for your branded keywords than the competition, through the quality score. Allowing companies to advertise against their peers is actually creating more competition on the marketplace (which is a good thing). Edit: Disclosure - I work at Google but this is my own opinion on multi-sided markets

Put that way, google is a market maker and hence should be regulated. Right now it’s an unsupervised private regulator, which doesn’t make sense.

[deleted]

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#379

Post by kfrzcode »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #361
kfrzcode wrote: post #318

Anyone here have a pro-Google stance? Because at this point I'm vehemently against the company and most of its products. There's no good replacement for Calendar or Docs/Sheets as of now, that I'm aware of. Microsoft's suite as mentioned by therealdrag0 is an obvious alternative, and perhaps less advertiser-oriented, but still not a great in-browser option IMO. Especially when considering the interoperability of the…

Pro-google stance: They provide tools millions enjoy for free. As for alternatives have you tried Microsoft's Suite?

Good point, I have some blinders on - but the "millions enjoy free" line doesn't justify all the data-slurping and advert-pushing that ABC does, in my opinion. Too large of a marketshare, there's gotta be some serious anti-trust issues going on behind the scenes.

Not to mention the thoughtcrime and influence/propaganda potential.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#380

Post by shawnz »

phillc73 wrote: post #363
LeftHandPath wrote: post #260

I've been using duckduckgo and bing for a while now. Google is just a fallback.

My biggest beef with DDG is that they do not do worldwide results very well. Their results are overwhelmingly US centric. As an example.... I search on DDG, "buy cricket equipment near me". I am not behind a VPN and whatsmyip correctly identifies my hostname with the correct European country suffix. However, the top results on DDG for this query is "Dick's Sporting Goods". Click on that and I get a nasty "GDPR DSG So…

There is a box at the top of the results page which you can tick to get country specific results
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