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Web by Google (TM)

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Re: Web by Google (TM)

#301

Post by Lammy »

malnourish wrote: post #294
UweSchmidt wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that all sorts of entities employ people to do PR on internet forums, and redirecting and deflecting is a crucial part of their tactics. Not saying that this is happening here, but forums need to be resilent and really focus hard on the issue at hand or be completely played by the professionals.

I see this claim often and while I don't deny its possibility I have yet to see any evidence to substantiate it.

That’s why it’s so effective. If they do it right you never will.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#302

Post by waheoo »

onion2k wrote: post #199
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #103

A lot of talk in this article about Google capturing the whole web, all valid points, but I find the Facebook walled garden even more terrifying. I see people now, often in online school parent groups I'm a part of, etc. who cannot even use email anymore, who don't use web pages at all, they get all their information through Facebook groups and Facebook, and only talk through Facebook messenger or sometimes SMS. E-ma…

Something we (people who work in tech) should be acutely aware of is causing unnecessary distractions from important issues. When there's a discussion about the Google very often the first few comments are about how some other tech company also does something unsavory. This is a thread about how Google's engineers are actively working to take over the web as we know it and become the gatekeepers to all the benefit (n…

Stop gatekeeping.

This same thing happened on the last thread about Google.

Discourse is full of distractions and side topics and healthy diversions, thats what makes it interesting.

Not everything has to be perfectly efficient like a well run board meeting complete with agenda and minutes taken.

I'm all for a healthy avoidance of bikeshedding and derailment but this isn't a derailment. This is a tangential anecdote entirely valid to bring to the table as it gives insight into what can happen if google continues down this path.

We don't need to postulate what might happen with Google, we can look at Facebook and say, hey, you know what, these same things are going to happen here, let me tell you how that worked out.

If you can't manage to figure out how to bring this conversation back to google without locking the gate on natural discourse that's on you. Not us. Not ap.

Stop gatekeeping.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#303

Post by dmje »

Asking a rhetorical and irritating question - but one which web nerds need to be much better at answering: why, exactly does it matter?

Don't get me wrong, I'm totally uncomfortable with a monopoly of this scale; I'm a Firefox user, a Pihole user, a non-FB user. But when people (non nerds) ask me why, it's hard to answer. They're all happy enough: Chrome is fast, AMP is faster, they get to find out the stuff they want to find out from incredibly accurate search, or Facebook - so what's the actual problem here?

My answer is normally about principles or competition or fairness but in practical terms, I haven't got a lot of answers.

Help me out here.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#304

Post by avh02 »

crispyporkbites wrote: post #89
nightcracker wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is overtaken by who exactly? In desktop & laptop Windows still holds a 87% market share.

Microsoft are an absolute beast, their revenue is diversified across so many areas in b2c and b2b, and they are selling real products / services that solve problems that people actually need and pay for. Contrast that with fb/google who are selling ad space for others to buy to fill with actual products, it’s clear who’s driving real value. I would bet that MS will outlast all the other tech giants by a long way.

I'm by no means Google's biggest fan but this definitely misrepresents things it offers such as gsuite

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#305

Post by jacquesm »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #295
jacquesm wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Textbook case of 'whataboutism'. Besides, avoiding Facebook is easy. Avoiding Google is impossible. I am much more worried about Google because of that.

It's not whataboutism, the first line of my comment included the agreement clause: "all valid points".

Adding a disclaimer like that doesn't change the intent nor the effect of the comment. That's like saying 'With all due respect' just before insulting someone.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#306

Post by Riverheart »

waheoo wrote: post #302
onion2k wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something we (people who work in tech) should be acutely aware of is causing unnecessary distractions from important issues. When there's a discussion about the Google very often the first few comments are about how some other tech company also does something unsavory. This is a thread about how Google's engineers are actively working to take over the web as we know it and become the gatekeepers to all the benefit (n…

Stop gatekeeping. This same thing happened on the last thread about Google. Discourse is full of distractions and side topics and healthy diversions, thats what makes it interesting. Not everything has to be perfectly efficient like a well run board meeting complete with agenda and minutes taken. I'm all for a healthy avoidance of bikeshedding and derailment but this isn't a derailment. This is a tangential anecdote…

Calling a request to focus on the substance of the article instead of related issues elsewhere seems a far cry from gatekeeping. Especially given there's no enforcement behind the request.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#307

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

eigenvector wrote: post #287
Xorlev wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I work for Google, but not on Chrome or Search. There's plenty of worry to go around. I would like to put aside the (very understandable) fear about Google for a second because I think the GP makes a good point. My parents used to use the open web, but have also more or less exclusively started to use Facebook to "surf the web" and get all of their information. The 2016 election was a joke, my mother woul…

YouTube is as big of a purveyor of misinformation as Facebook. I just spent two hours yesterday dissecting all manner of coronavirus misinformation my mom learned from YouTube. The insidious aspect of it is that she never went looking for that - she started off watching legitimate sources like credible media outlets but autoplay took her further and further down the rabbit hole without even realizing she was no longe…

YouTube is a _much bigger_ purveyor of misinformation than Facebook IMX. When I scroll down my Facebook feed, its automated suggestions are "maybe you might know this friend-of-a-friend" or "maybe you might want to join this group about choral singing". When I watch a YouTube video, the automated "watch next" suggestions are "Watch Jacob Rees-Mogg DESTROY liberals with one sentence!".

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#308

Post by lisper »

dmje wrote: post #303

Asking a rhetorical and irritating question - but one which web nerds need to be much better at answering: why, exactly does it matter? Don't get me wrong, I'm totally uncomfortable with a monopoly of this scale; I'm a Firefox user, a Pihole user, a non-FB user. But when people (non nerds) ask me why, it's hard to answer. They're all happy enough: Chrome is fast, AMP is faster, they get to find out the stuff they wan…

It's about the extent to which you want to allow a very small number of very rich people to control your life and your voice. If the open web dies, if FB is all that is left, then effectively no one will be able to say anything in the public sphere without Mark Zuckerberg's permission, and no one will be able to even participate in daily life without paying Mark Zuckerberg for the privilege, even if only indirectly. Is that really the world you want to live in?

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#309

Post by mattacular »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #92
mattacular wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lot of effort to maintain AMP pages for all your site content alongside the standard pages over time. That's why they tend to degrade.

Reminds me of the old-fashioned "m. " sites we used to have to maintain for mobile browsing; often using wonderful tech like WML. That sucked.

Yes, it is effectively like operating an "adaptive" site alongside your (probably) responsive main site

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#310

Post by jka »

UweSchmidt wrote: post #233
onion2k wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something we (people who work in tech) should be acutely aware of is causing unnecessary distractions from important issues. When there's a discussion about the Google very often the first few comments are about how some other tech company also does something unsavory. This is a thread about how Google's engineers are actively working to take over the web as we know it and become the gatekeepers to all the benefit (n…

Worth noting that all sorts of entities employ people to do PR on internet forums, and redirecting and deflecting is a crucial part of their tactics. Not saying that this is happening here, but forums need to be resilent and really focus hard on the issue at hand or be completely played by the professionals.

This is outside of my area of expertise, but I wonder whether it'd be possible to train machine learning models to identify divergent threads of conversation.

Tangential conversation can be useful and constructive sometimes; but other times it'd be nice to apply a contextual overlay to a conversation which emboldens the on-topic discussion items and de-prioritizes side discussions.

It's possible to argue that that's what the HN community itself should do naturally via upvote/downvote behaviour -- but in practice there are various (often valid) reasons why an unrelated thread of commentary can become more popular than on-topic discussion.

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