As a non-programmar, what are some web standards dictated by google that make it worse for me, the uninformed user? Im sure they exist, but I don’t know them.
Google Amp.
Whenever you see the amp symbol, avoid visiting that site.
Web by Google (TM)
161–170 of 496 posts
Re: Web by Google (TM)
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't forget that Amazon dominates a lot more than just retail on the internet. With AWS they effectively run large portions of it as well.
Don't underestimate how Google is becomming the storefront of all retail on internet. Google can now dictate which webshop is shown first in search results on a product level. I know retailers are sick of this. They need Google to be found on the web but they don't like how Google is destroying retail.
There isn't really a strong narrative that Google Shopping is any kind of threat to Amazon or Walmart. Nobody knows if it's going to catch momentum, or if Google will just kill in a few years.
Re: Web by Google (TM)
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Couldn't you have said the same thing 20 years ago and used "AOL" instead? There seems to be a large group of users who consistently fit this trend and the company names just get swapped occasionally
AOL at least was pretty strictly a US phenomenon. Here in Canada it wasn't a thing, and it wasn't a thing in Europe or Asia. FB's tendril's are international. What's worse is it's very walled off, it's not really searchable or properly indexed. FB's search facilities are a joke, such as they are, but they are only available to FB users. Information that goes in there is basically available to FB and to nobody else.
Back in the day, Compuserve was quite popular in the UK, and I had understood the rest of the Europe too.
I never used AOL, but I believe it was similar to Compuserve - a walled garden with forums, file downloads, instant messaging and such.
Like AOL, Compuserve reached popularity during the infancy of the web - the web, viewed through Netscape Navigator at the time, was really rather basic, and comparatively empty, or at least so it seemed to me at the time.
I actually remember thinking Compuserve was far superior to the web, and scoffed that the web would never take off. How wrong I was!
Re: Web by Google (TM)
#164I think we’re in a real low point right now. Gmail, AMP, Chrome, Android. So many peoples internet experience is from one place. With Amazon dominating retail, and Facebook under its various brands dominating social media, there isn’t much scope for other players. I don’t see another option than breaking theses companies up at this point.
I don’t think breaking them up is the only option- we need to continue to create innovative companies that defeat the incumbents. Its hard to see right now but history tells us it will come and they will fall, every incumbent always gets complacent and stops innovating and someone comes and cleans up. For example YT hasn’t fundamentally changed in a decade, and the user experience is starting to feel a little off (sp…
If the last electrical/electronics boom is any indicator, it will take a century for these giants to die. Sony is ~75 years old and still going strong. Hitachi, Panasonic, Samsung are all more than 100 years old.
Re: Web by Google (TM)
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know if you remember the mobile news web around 2015 or so. Content would furiously jump around as the page was overcome by advalanches, videos on autoplay would pop up in all the corners, as you scrolled, the page would often break at paragraphs as even more videos would load, secretly sliding in the content like some infestation. If you tried to highlight text to copy, you'd see interstitial popups of yet a…
Indeed. I'm not saying there were no issues driving AMP. But there are many possible solutions that did not require Google hijacking your urls.
Ok I'll bite, there's a number of other pre-amp sites that basically scraped the content and then displayed it in a nice form for reading. Those did the same solution.
The only way around a centralized solution is a magical "disable garbage" ad block extension in the browser, and those also exist, and are maintained once again, by a centralized group.
Ok so another solution, just stop indexing or boosting the garbage sites forcing them to change, that's what amp does yet again.
I agree that I want some greener pasture alternative from over yonder, but what?
Re: Web by Google (TM)
#166I thought hell will freeze first but ... can we please have Safari on Windows? Just to have one real alternative?
Re: Web by Google (TM)
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
As for SMTP, most people use Gmail nowadays anyway. Google might be able to kill SMTP if they wanted to.
They'd have to cooperate with Microsoft, which hosts email for a large number of companies.
Don't agree here.
Most companies use mail internally or to interact with customers usually using some type of external mailing service.....
Re: Web by Google (TM)
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meh, I think the longest lasting protocols are the decentralised ones, the good ones just can’t fail by design. SMTP is still going very strong, BitTorrent isn’t going away, bitcoin won’t die anytime soon slack/discord will probably disappear and be replaced by another closed system until we find the right way to do real time chat in a decentralised way.
As for SMTP, most people use Gmail nowadays anyway. Google might be able to kill SMTP if they wanted to.
Google will not be able to kill smtp, gmail is only one side of the email market. They’d have to offer a transactional and marketing email service and get every app/company to use that over smtp. It’s monumental and I don’t think it will change for decades.
Re: Web by Google (TM)
#169>I think it’s safe to say that Google’s AdWords is the dominant advertising platform on the open Web, which means it holds a commanding position in the Web’s finances. That's a very interesting observation. Google will thus prevent a native payment option at all costs, which leaves a huge opening for Brave or another payment provider. (Which is enhanced by content providers being threatened by AMP.) I don't see Googl…
agree that I see google as vulnerable and the space could move very quickly - for end users, there's no lock-in (compared to eg facebook with the network effect)
but is Zoom chinese ?
Re: Web by Google (TM)
#170I would be very interested in seeing HN commenters' theories on the following scenarios: A) what happens if Google decides to stop funneling money to Mozilla? What becomes of Firefox? B) at what point do you think the $350+ million/year cash flow to Firefox will get cut off? C) do you think Mozilla has a reasonable chance of success of replacing that amount of money with a deal with Microsoft/bing?
> B) at what point do you think the $350+ million/year cash flow to Firefox will get cut off?
I think there's at least 3 reasons why Google wants to continue funding Firefox:
1. To get access to 200M+ users for their search ads
2. To have a competitor that helps Google make money and so Firefox can serve as evidence, that Chrome has competition and Google isn't trying to stomp out competition, in anti-trust cases.
3. To stop other search engines (e.g. Bing) from partnering with Mozilla.
If Google were to not renew the contract next time, then they take two risks:
1. What if a lot of former Firefox users switch to something other than Chrome?
2. What if someone continues funding Firefox so Google loses out on the additional reach for their search ads?
The benefit of cutting off the funding could be quickening Firefox's downfall and, perhaps, the bulk of Firefox users switching to Chrome.
I think Google will cut off the deal when the number of Firefox users drops enough for the risks to be negligible. Until then, Firefox will continue to slowly lose users and the bulk of those will switch to Chrome/Edge/Safari. I wonder what the breakdown is. I'd suspect the platform default largely dictates which browser a former Firefox user switches to.