Web by Google (TM) • Hacker News Board

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#311

Post by TekMol » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

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…

Many reasons come to mind. Here is one:

When one entity controls the web and you run a web based business, then you have to live in constant fear that they will destroy it. By accident or by malice.

One example how this is already happening is AMP. Google says "Give us your content or we will send people interested in it to your competitors instead". And they get away with it.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#312

Post by zelly » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

doublerabbit wrote: post #161

biophysboy wrote: post #36

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.

AMP is a subset of HTML and JavaScript which can be safely rendered server-side and runs fast on mobile phones. I find it ironic that the pro-Mozilla neckbeards who typically complain about bloated JavaScript websites also complain about AMP, for no reason other than it was developed by G. AMP is actually good for users.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#313

Post by NorwegianDude » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

noahmasur wrote: post #218

fractionalhare wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there statistics on the browser usage on HN? Just for a good laugh. Here is a screenshot of my Cloudfront dashboard showing the breakdown of user agents into particular browsers when an article of mine reached the top of HN about two months ago: https://imgur.com/a/gQ2mxOM Looking at the number of distinct IP addresses in Athena for that day, about 20,200 of those hits were distinct viewers: https://imgur.com/a…

I wonder if mobile Safari domination is partly because iOS apps themselves use "Safari" when displaying webpages. If I tap an article using the Octal HN app, it opens in an internal "browser view" that is just an instance of Safari.

Even Chrome on iOS uses safari(webkit). There is no competition allowed on iOS, and that really sucks considering how terrible Safari is.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#314

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#315

Post by neves » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

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.

They don't need to be so Machiavellian. This forum is filled with Google and Facebook engineers. Some of them sincerely don't see anything bad in their companies. Others probably want to protect their stock options.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#316

Post by CaioAlonso » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

dmurray wrote: post #80

alangibson wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMP is the most transparent land grab Google has pulled. It's technically unjustifiable, is arguably value destroying, and as a bonus you can't disable it. It only makes sense in terms of trying to lock marketers and publishers into a Google-led ecosystem.

Why can't I disable it? Shouldn't there be a browser extension that just rewrites all AMP links to the underlying source (if I understand right, this always exists - the page may be AMPified but it's still served from the publisher rather than from Google). This isn't a rhetorical question, I'm interested to know whether that would work. As I see it AMP can be just as big a problem just by being there by default on G…

https://www.daniel.priv.no/web-extensions/amp2html.html

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#317

Post by neves » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 4:54 PM UTC

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.

It's really impressive how quickly how posts that criticize Google and Facebook are downvoted.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#318

Post by crispyporkbites » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 4:54 PM UTC

avh02 wrote: post #304

crispyporkbites wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Most orgs switch to MS once they get over a few hundred users. G suite has 6 million paying customers, Microsoft office has over a billion users.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#319

Post by andrei_says_ » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 4:56 PM UTC

jka wrote: post #310

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.

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…

It’s much easier to train a globally distributed English speaking workforce to do this for very cheap.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#320

Post by zelly » Sun, Aug 16, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

person_of_color wrote: post #260

dewijones92 wrote: post #122

A good idea would be to state fund Mozilla.

Fund Mozilla by mining crypto (with permission)

CPU mining is notoriously unprofitable. If you got every single Firefox-running desktop to mine Monero or some other coin that can be CPU mined, you'd be lucky to break a couple thousand dollars a year. This would be at the expense of wrecking batteries, wrecking SSDs, and annoying all users.