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How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

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Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#181

Post by kerkeslager »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #176
kerkeslager wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty clear what Peretti was talking about--let's make an effort to respond to his intended meaning and not get caught up in semantics. Peretti is talking about quality versus quantity: maybe Google doesn't serve up quality ads, maybe they just serve up quantity ads.

He may be right, but if Google is bad at ads, it's not for any lack of incentive alignment. They make more money by serving up the most efficient (i.e. high-paying + likely to be clicked) ads. It's not impossible, but it's hard to picture another organization having both the economic means and incentives to do it better than Google does. As to the question posed by the article, isn't the answer obvious? I don't know…

> He may be right, but if Google is bad at ads, it's not for any lack of incentive alignment. They make more money by serving up the most efficient (i.e. high-paying + likely to be clicked) ads. It's not impossible, but it's hard to picture another organization having both the economic means and incentives to do it better than Google does.

Yeah, I think the only way that would happen is if someone came up with a novel superior approach to search and managed to legally protect it so Google couldn't just copy it. That's a very unlikely at this point.

> But it is manifestly the case that they will cease to do so when Google's answers cease to be the least efficient for whatever purposes users have for those answers.

I don't think I agree with this. Users don't necessarily behave rationally in self-interest: they can be (and are) manipulated, and unwilling to try new tools.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#182

Post by JohnFen »

jiveturkey wrote: post #166
JohnFen wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No they aren't and never did. That you can say this make me think that we are using different definitions. Have they also stopped buying real-world credit card usage and correlating it with your other actions? > To the extent they do collect as much data as they can, they limit it to identify you as a unique user, not you as a specific person. That doesn't really make it much better, in my opinion. > They do an exc…

> Have they also stopped buying real-world credit card usage and correlating it with your other actions? Thank you. This is a really great example of pitchfork-ism. People want to see things that aren't there. Their desire to see those things blinds them to what is actually happening. Google doesn't and never did what you are implying. Yes, they correlate those 2 sets of information. But neither side of the transacti…

> Google is acting as a responsible steward for the information they collect.

OK, but that's beside the point. The point is that they collect information about me without my consent.

> There are much, much worse actors out there that are far more deserving of the spite that is sent in Google's direction.

Let's say this is true. That in no way means that we shouldn't complain about Google as well. I direct my ire at all companies that I consider abusive. That some of those may be more abusive than others isn't a free pass to the less abusive ones.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#183

Post by calibas »

kerkeslager wrote: post #97
Disruptive_Dave wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's precisely what makes Google "good at ads." They built the firehose. Own a destination where billions of people go everyday, find a way to measure their intent, serve my information to them. That = fantastic at ads.

I think it's pretty clear what Peretti was talking about--let's make an effort to respond to his intended meaning and not get caught up in semantics. Peretti is talking about quality versus quantity: maybe Google doesn't serve up quality ads, maybe they just serve up quantity ads.

Peretti is talking about the quality of the ad service, not the quality of the ads themselves. Peretti is suggesting that maybe Google's service isn't anything special, and their success is due to their insanely large audience.

The comment you replied to goes even further to suggest there's no real talent to serving ads at all, and that everything depends upon the audience size. That's not just semantics.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#184

Post by rowathray »

xp84 wrote: post #180
rowathray wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switch to OneSearch. It's just an anonymizing wrapper around Bing like DuckDuckGo, but since it's run by a public utility (Verizon) rather than a private fly by night outfit like DDG, I trust it slightly more.

This seems fine and I'm not anti-onesearch or anti-Verizon in particular, but why do you feel that DDG is "fly by night"? Because they're small? I think more Americans have been scammed by Verizon, Comcast, or AT&T than have ever even heard of DuckDuckGo! I have plenty of tiny class-action settlement checks to prove it.

Because they're not public. If they ever got exposed violating privacy the owner would just declare bankruptcy and move to the Bahamas.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#185

Post by cletus »

I would love to be a fly on the wall for the decisions that led to Google making the distinction between ads and search results more ambiguous with the latest redesign because whoever signed off on this needs to be fired, for Google's sake.

Google SERPs are the one form of advertising I don't mind and are most effective because:

1. Unlike pretty much every other form of online advertising, you have the benefit of user intent in that they actually want to find something and an advertised result may be what they're looking for. Most other forms of online advertising are deliberately intrusive because attention = $$$; and

2. Google ads are paid for on a CPC basis rather than CPM basis so Google is incentivized to show you something relevant to you and your search rather than just churning impressions (like those pages that split an article into a gallery of 11 pages; ad impressions is why they do this).

But a key part of this is user trust that Google clearly differentiated an ad from an organic search result. I wonder what short term metrics and thinking went into this. I'm sure there was a short term topline revenue gain but it's one of those things that you're not actually increasingly value, you're just cashing in your brand's value for cash now.

But hey I'm sure a bunch of people got promoted, so it's fine.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#186

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

As far as I can tell, there are four major search providers: Google, Bing, Baidu, & Yandex. Qwant seems to do some amount of their own indexing, falling back to Bing for other things ( https://betterweb.qwant.com/web-indexation-where-does-qwants... ). Most of the 'alternative' search engines (DDG &c.) seem to rely on Bing and a few (like StartPage) on Google, and I continue to find regular Bing-based search results worse than Google-based search results. Searx is interesting (and what I largely use), and can aggregate from various providers, but it's hard to find reliable working Searx instances.

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#188

Post by McWobbleston »

titzer wrote: post #103
Disruptive_Dave wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's precisely what makes Google "good at ads." They built the firehose. Own a destination where billions of people go everyday, find a way to measure their intent, serve my information to them. That = fantastic at ads.

After all this time watchin me, everything I ever asked it, all the ads I never clicked on, all the videos it watched me watch, all my emails it read, heck even after I worked for the dang company for nearly ten years, Google does not understand a very basic, essential thing about me. I hate advertising, damn it! I am sick of looking at it, I am sick of it looking at me. I am sick of hearing about how advertising is…

I just want to point out it's not necessarily that we want those things, it's that those who are in control push for it, and they do it because the way our society is structured rewards them for it

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#189

Post by feanaro »

oehpr wrote: post #173
ineedasername wrote: post #87

I think a better question that isn't asked is the following: Has Google created a market for ads where non would exist if they simply provided only organic results? By this I mean that it's possible the main reason Google Ads are useful for companies is because Google has reinforced a sort of negative Nash equilibrium by allowing competitors to squat on organic results by purchasing ads against those better results.…

If you put the question to people "Would you have an easier time finding good products and services if there were no advertisements?" I think the majority of people would answer "no". It's sad state of affairs we're in if we can't even imagine finding out about something without that knowledge being forced down our throats.

I haven't seen an internet ad in years due to using uBlock Origin with very strict block lists. I feel like I find products and services I need effortlessly. Am I missing something?

Re: How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

#190

Post by celticmusic »

Semaphor wrote: post #171
rurp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google ignoring what I had actually typed and instead showing results to a more popular query that was similar, but distinctly different, is what finally got me to switch over to DuckDuckGo. Now that I've gotten used to DDG I find Google unpleasant to use. The amount of ads and clutter on the page is distracting, and the organic results seemed ever more skewed towards ecommerce results.

DDG only just recently added the feature that they show you which terms they ignored… most of the time. This is actually my main problem with DDG (which is my default search engine), that they like to ignore even quotation mark-forced words. My impression is that Google sees "" as an important signal for what you want while DDG sees it as something you probably did by mistake and decides to show you a ton of unrelate…

I was under the impression that google ignores quotes, atleast that was my experience starting years ago before I switched to DDG.

Maybe they changed that stance at some point?

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