Every Google result now looks like an ad • Hacker News Board

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#701

Post by d1zzy » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 2:35 AM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #591

d1zzy wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and as they can't fix that without losing out on tracking Tracking what users click to as the result of a search is critical feedback information for training your models/algorithms, it's not just about "hey let's see where this user goes to fine tune ad targeting for them". And, AFAIK, every search engine out there does it(?)

Perhaps so, but I still find it highly objectionable.

Just search in a private window then, the part of the tracking that I assume you find objectionable (gathering info on what sites the current user visits) goes away when you close the window while the part that helps the search engine (and thus results in better search results for everyone) still works.

Now sure, we can argue that maybe the company should provide options where you can say "you can use what I click on for search training but not for targeted advertising" (I think Google does provide a set of options that pretty much disable all web history/targeted ad collection), assuming you believe they follow through. But the company needs to pay for its services somehow so I can't blame them for tying the two types of tracking together, I still have tools as a user (private window) to avoid it if I care enough to.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#702

Post by rafaelvasco » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 2:37 AM UTC

impalallama wrote: post #443

rafaelvasco wrote: post #437

Like someone recommended , https://www.startpage.com/ appears to be a solution. Going to give it a try;

how they different than something like duckduckgo?

They say they're using Google's search engine. They bought the rights to use it.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#703

Post by manigandham » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 2:37 AM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #674

manigandham wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Effectively 0 AMP sites are using anything other than Google's CDN.

Is this link using Google's CDN? https://amp.businessinsider.com/lambda-school-online-coding-...

Yes, sites just host the original copy submitted to Google. You can see all the resources are loaded from https://cdn.ampproject.org

If you visit the page from search results (which is the only place it would be linked) then it would never leave Google's domain.

Here's the actual URL used from search results: https://amp-businessinsider-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.b...

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#704

Post by jaycroft » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 2:38 AM UTC

ronilan wrote: post #99

pushcx wrote: post #29

https://www.google.com/about/honestresults/ It's a little confusing to read now, so for context: at the time Google published this, it only put ads in the sidebar to the right of search results. This post was written to criticize the practice of putting ads atop search results, which competitors sometimes formatted almost indistinguishably from organic search results.

Your link is gold. A historic artifact. Amazing how clear the writing is, how simple the message. That’s, like, totally not the corpspeak Goog emits now on a daily basis. So, let’s do some digging. Earliest version of url dates back 4+ years. https://web.archive.org/web/20151213182805/https://www.googl... Things were a little better than, but not by much. This has to be earlier. Ah, here is: https://books.google.ca/b…

The google books link appears to have died: "You have either reached a page that is unavailable for viewing or reached your viewing limit for this book"

(I'm fairly certain that I have not viewed anything from this book, nor any book for that matter, this year.)

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#705

Post by dole » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 2:43 AM UTC

wolco wrote: post #695

jethro_tell wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use duckduckgo, and for the most part, you know what you are searching for so the !tags are really good. !w search term, just takes you right to wikipedea. When I really have no ideal what or where I'm looking for something, I still find myself looking on google a bit, but for the most part, !youtube, !arch, !git, !stack, get me exactly what I want about 99 percent of the time. Check it out, because it sounds like…

Is there a shorter domain name for ddg?

Duck.com?

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#706

Post by runarberg » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 2:43 AM UTC

wolco wrote: post #695

jethro_tell wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use duckduckgo, and for the most part, you know what you are searching for so the !tags are really good. !w search term, just takes you right to wikipedea. When I really have no ideal what or where I'm looking for something, I still find myself looking on google a bit, but for the most part, !youtube, !arch, !git, !stack, get me exactly what I want about 99 percent of the time. Check it out, because it sounds like…

Is there a shorter domain name for ddg?

https://duck.com Should redirect you.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#707

Post by tech234a » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 2:45 AM UTC

tech234a wrote: post #574

A little while back I started experimenting with changing the user agent string and found that there are actually many different variations of Google’s search UI that are currently accessible. For example, I was surprised to find that by setting the user agent string to Netscape Navigator 4, I could get a lightweight, no-JS version of Google that looked like it was from the early 2000’s. By using a user agent string…

I just realized that most of these UIs unfortunately redirect to a simplified mobile UI. Thanks to those who pointed this out in the comments; after Google had left the UIs in-place for 15+ years, I wasn’t expecting them to remove in the few months since I put together this extension. I’ll look into seeing if there are any user agent strings that still work in the future.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#708

Post by qilo » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 2:45 AM UTC

wolco wrote: post #695

jethro_tell wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use duckduckgo, and for the most part, you know what you are searching for so the !tags are really good. !w search term, just takes you right to wikipedea. When I really have no ideal what or where I'm looking for something, I still find myself looking on google a bit, but for the most part, !youtube, !arch, !git, !stack, get me exactly what I want about 99 percent of the time. Check it out, because it sounds like…

Is there a shorter domain name for ddg?

There is a https://ddg.gg which redirects to the main domain, so I'm not sure if it's what you're looking for.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#709

Post by andolanra » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 2:47 AM UTC

choathedolls wrote: post #686

jwond wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might like DuckDuckGo and “bangs”. https://duckduckgo.com/bang

For anyone reading this thinking "what a killer feature I need to switch to DDG now". All browsers do this natively now. In Chromium engines it's found under "Manage Search Engine". In Firefox it's under "One Click Search Engine".

My Firefox install has seven search engines by default in the "one-click search engine" options. By contrast, DuckDuckGo has 13000 bang shortcuts. Sure, you don't need all of them, but I use dozens: some of them almost daily (like !w for Wikipedia and !wt for Wiktionary), some sporadically (like !tw for Twitter or !a for Amazon) and some of them only rarely (e.g. I picked up a Pokémon game recently and consequently have used !bulba to quickly search Bulbapedia, a Pokémon fan wiki.) Of course I can add all those to Firefox, but DuckDuckGo already has them set up, and has many more that I can use without thinking about them. I think that still counts as a killer feature.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#710

Post by GeorgeWBasic » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 2:50 AM UTC

randomsearch wrote: post #567

ChuckMcM wrote: post #453

Very much a way to mitigate the FTC's requirements on making advertising more distinct than organic results. It is an unpopular opinion but I believe Google is dying. They have been for a long time. The cancer is that nothing other than search ads generates the revenue and margins they need and the margins on search ads are now down 90% from where they were in 2010. Personally I'm long on Microsoft/Bing as a candidat…

Google’s biggest opportunity is Cloud. They’re playing catch up but with the culture and staff they have, that’s where I’d be focussing my efforts. I think the 2020s will be the biggest decade for cloud adoption.

I don't think it is. Their hard-earned reputation for canceling services is really hurting them now. They never accounted for the effect of all the users they've been continually pissing off moving up in the ranks in companies and deciding never to use Google services. The leaked communication that suggests that they could actually cancel GCP doomed any chance that that would be a big player next to AWS and Azure.