Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Layoffs hit Quora

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 283 posts

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#71

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

kinkora wrote: post #59

Not sure if a bit of confirmation bias on my side but seems like there is a recent big uptick of layoffs at Silicon Valley companies? Popular ones like Quora, TripAvisor, Ebay, Mozilla, Uber, 23andMe, etc we hear about but among my own network, i am even hearing it from smaller startups & businesses. Just wondering if it is just me but I am surmising that it seems to indicate a wider systematic.. issue? Maybe issue i…

I mean, there's barely been 2k layoffs that I've heard of in a year. Google's hired more than that in The Bay alone. I'm sure Facebook and Apple have hired just as many.

I really doubt we're at a net negative.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#72

Post by harikb »

codingslave wrote: post #23

Any company that relies on SEO content is basically going to disapear. Google search and their new NLP technology is just extracting the question and answers from content like that on Quora, significantly reducing their page hit volumes. Not only that, other lower ranked content can be verified to be "true" using neural network based NLP, meaning that the value of content has gone down. Google stole the business of q…

So far what I have seen is Google search giving snippets or Google AMP optimizing for mobile. Still the content is physically from some page verbatim. The AI/NLP comes in only in top 0.1% kind of queries like “what is the weather” or “what is my IP address”. Saying Google’s AI is learning everything is like blaming Chinese for stealing all tech. Yes, it happens at some cases, but not likely. I am surprised to see so much Google hatred here.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#73

Post by geofft »

codingslave wrote: post #23

Any company that relies on SEO content is basically going to disapear. Google search and their new NLP technology is just extracting the question and answers from content like that on Quora, significantly reducing their page hit volumes. Not only that, other lower ranked content can be verified to be "true" using neural network based NLP, meaning that the value of content has gone down. Google stole the business of q…

> The content is simply extracted and stolen. How can we have a thriving internet when such monopolistic and profit driven practices stifle innovation and creation on the web?

TripAdvisor, Quora, and Yelp are just as rent-seeking and profit-driven as Google.

If I write a review on TripAdvisor or Yelp or answer a question on Quora, I, the author, certainly don't get compensated for it. If Quora fails and another company takes their place, it's no loss to me - I'm no less (and no more) willing to write for the new company for free. If I write the review on Google itself, I lose nothing. Perhaps something is structurally lost for the internet by allowing Google to be a monopoly, but there aren't any incentives for me to care.

If you want a thriving internet, fix that. Ideally, make it the case that when I write a good answer to a technical question on my blog, it's as likely to be seen as when I write a good answer to a technical question on StackOverflow - the idea of companies relying on SEO content is a structural failing in the first place. Then figure out how to motivate me to keep posting to my blog (which might be letting me, the actual author, monetize my blog somehow, but might just be me writing for the pleasure of writing and knowing other people are seeing it - or perhaps the quantified pleasure of seeing trustworthy upvotes in some way).

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#74

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

geofft wrote: post #73
codingslave wrote: post #23

Any company that relies on SEO content is basically going to disapear. Google search and their new NLP technology is just extracting the question and answers from content like that on Quora, significantly reducing their page hit volumes. Not only that, other lower ranked content can be verified to be "true" using neural network based NLP, meaning that the value of content has gone down. Google stole the business of q…

> The content is simply extracted and stolen. How can we have a thriving internet when such monopolistic and profit driven practices stifle innovation and creation on the web? TripAdvisor, Quora, and Yelp are just as rent-seeking and profit-driven as Google. If I write a review on TripAdvisor or Yelp or answer a question on Quora, I, the author, certainly don't get compensated for it. If Quora fails and another compa…

The paradox is, if these companies fold, Google has to get the data from somewhere.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#75

Post by bogomipz »

codingslave wrote: post #23

Any company that relies on SEO content is basically going to disapear. Google search and their new NLP technology is just extracting the question and answers from content like that on Quora, significantly reducing their page hit volumes. Not only that, other lower ranked content can be verified to be "true" using neural network based NLP, meaning that the value of content has gone down. Google stole the business of q…

>"Google NLP algorithms use quora and trip advisor like training data sets."

I understand that Google competes with Trip Advisor with their own travel offering but might you or someone else explain how they use NLP algorithms steal business from them? Also could you elaborate on how they might be using NLP on Quora to their advantage. Where or how do they compete with Quora exactly? Thanks.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#76

Post by unlinked_dll »

samantohermes wrote: post #62
kinkora wrote: post #59

Not sure if a bit of confirmation bias on my side but seems like there is a recent big uptick of layoffs at Silicon Valley companies? Popular ones like Quora, TripAvisor, Ebay, Mozilla, Uber, 23andMe, etc we hear about but among my own network, i am even hearing it from smaller startups & businesses. Just wondering if it is just me but I am surmising that it seems to indicate a wider systematic.. issue? Maybe issue i…

These are signs of the upcoming global economic crisis. Companies funded by the FED are simply not sustainable.

What does FED stand for in this context?

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#77

Post by [deleted] »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #74
geofft wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The content is simply extracted and stolen. How can we have a thriving internet when such monopolistic and profit driven practices stifle innovation and creation on the web? TripAdvisor, Quora, and Yelp are just as rent-seeking and profit-driven as Google. If I write a review on TripAdvisor or Yelp or answer a question on Quora, I, the author, certainly don't get compensated for it. If Quora fails and another compa…

The paradox is, if these companies fold, Google has to get the data from somewhere.

[deleted]

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#78

Post by Mathnerd314 »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #74
geofft wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The content is simply extracted and stolen. How can we have a thriving internet when such monopolistic and profit driven practices stifle innovation and creation on the web? TripAdvisor, Quora, and Yelp are just as rent-seeking and profit-driven as Google. If I write a review on TripAdvisor or Yelp or answer a question on Quora, I, the author, certainly don't get compensated for it. If Quora fails and another compa…

The paradox is, if these companies fold, Google has to get the data from somewhere.

> If I write the review on Google itself, I lose nothing.

There are distinct advantages to having a single cloud, with a single set of protocols/APIs/etc. The only issue I see is if Google starts filtering/blocking in a significant way, then the blocked communities will build their own infrastructure. But Google wouldn't want that data, since they are filtering it out in the first place, except perhaps to train their filters more accurately.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#79

Post by toomuchtodo »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #74
geofft wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The content is simply extracted and stolen. How can we have a thriving internet when such monopolistic and profit driven practices stifle innovation and creation on the web? TripAdvisor, Quora, and Yelp are just as rent-seeking and profit-driven as Google. If I write a review on TripAdvisor or Yelp or answer a question on Quora, I, the author, certainly don't get compensated for it. If Quora fails and another compa…

The paradox is, if these companies fold, Google has to get the data from somewhere.

Make that corpus licensed with a Creative Commons license where commercial use requires compensation, but non commercial use is freely permitted.

Re: Layoffs hit Quora

#80

Post by codingslave »

harikb wrote: post #72
codingslave wrote: post #23

Any company that relies on SEO content is basically going to disapear. Google search and their new NLP technology is just extracting the question and answers from content like that on Quora, significantly reducing their page hit volumes. Not only that, other lower ranked content can be verified to be "true" using neural network based NLP, meaning that the value of content has gone down. Google stole the business of q…

So far what I have seen is Google search giving snippets or Google AMP optimizing for mobile. Still the content is physically from some page verbatim. The AI/NLP comes in only in top 0.1% kind of queries like “what is the weather” or “what is my IP address”. Saying Google’s AI is learning everything is like blaming Chinese for stealing all tech. Yes, it happens at some cases, but not likely. I am surprised to see so…

The newest research out of the Google AI labs is all centered around extractive summarazation. Led by a researcher from CMU named William Cohen. Their next big business is content extraction.
Post reply on HN