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Web by Google (TM)

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Re: Web by Google (TM)

#381

Post by sukilot »

lisper wrote: post #308
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.…

Compared to the world before Zuckerberg where there was not even that way?

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#382

Post by Lammy »

grumbel wrote: post #378

I think the biggest failure of the open web is simply the lack of a "Publish" function. You can consume on the open web just fine, but for publishing you need to own a server, not just a client. That in turn gave growth to Youtube, Facebook and Co., as they allowed people to publish content with just a web client. Search and payment are important as well, but only really become relevant when the content is on the web…

It was called RSS, and there were plenty of free and paid providers who would host your feeds and even feed content (like podcast audio) for you. The most popular was called FeedBurner, and you can imagine what became of it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FeedBurner

https://support.google.com/feedburner/answer/79408?hl=en

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#383

Post by sukilot »

easton wrote: post #139
dmitshur wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even here on HN you have threads full of people coming up with excuses for why they won't run Firefox, and that's a community that should understand the implication of those things. Genuine question, do you mind saying (or pointing to something) what are the implications of browser choice of individuals reading HN?

I mean, it’s the same story as Apple and the Mac. Consumers ask their pro/techie friend what they use, and do that. People buy MacBook Pros, people use Chrome. When pros say “I won’t use Firefox because this little feature doesn’t work exactly like Chrome”, their mom doesn’t either.

MacBook Pro is a tiny fraction of laptop user base.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#384

Post by speedgoose »

oarsinsync wrote: post #369
speedgoose wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that in practice nobody at AWS reads customer secrets and if someone does, it will be logged somewhere but I always find it funny that you can encrypt things in AWS with secrets fully managed by AWS. It's just a checkbox to check the box for encryption in technical requirements but it doesn't really matter if you really care about privacy when the keys are stored in a very safe box accessible by AWS and the US…

> I know that in practice nobody at AWS reads customer secrets and if someone does, it will be logged somewhere Can you share how you know this to be true? I certainly hope it's true, but I have no way of knowing myself.

I actually don't know, you are right. I have some trust in AWS but I would never put a real secret in AWS in clear text.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#385

Post by toastal »

fractionalhare wrote: post #205
simias wrote: post #84

The problem is that, IMO, centralization of the internet is simply the natural course. Especially when people seem to care so little. Centralization is cheaper, easier to monetize, easier to control, easier to update and upgrade. That's why people prefer Discord to IRC, that's why people prefer Slack to SMTP or Jabber, that's why for many people these days the distinction between git and GitHub is blurry. I suspect t…

> 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…

Those are the highest figures I've seen for Firefox Android anywhere. I'm shocked, but proud.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#386

Post by hakfoo »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #181
jasode wrote: post #136

Earlier 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 was dominant (~30 million dialup subscribers at its 2002 peak) but didn't build any "sticky" products such as Facebook's social graph (a very valuable online Rolodex contacts database of real names ). Each dialup us…

> dialup user of AOL didn't interact with each other that much back then because the internet wasn't as central to life like today. Speak for yourself as a kid I would go on AOL chatrooms all day every single day. The kids rooms were packed with at least like 30 instances of them and like 10 to 20 kids in between. Learned what a/s/l meant back then something you dont hear as often these days hah. MSN Messenger had MS…

Honestly, it seems like we never successfully replicated the AOL/Prodigy era chat room paradigm. My family still has friends we met in late-90s AOL chat rooms, and we honestly ended up stuck on their dialup for years longer than would have been sane due to wanting to stick to that community (at the time, I think the bring-your-own-connection service was still an extra fee, so we'd have to pay $15 to a local ISP plus $15 for AOL or whatever, versus paying them $25 in the first place."

There's IRC, which tends to have a much higher technical barrier to entry though, and a lack of centralization makes for a more difficult discovery and user experience.

I also wonder if by tying it to a paid service in the first place gave a bit more ammunition for moderators to handle the "obnoxious 12-year-old" class of troll.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#387

Post by jacquesm »

throwaway45349 wrote: post #363
respondo2134 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Googler but still throw away account? You must not feel too strongly about your convictions. You also obviously don't understand what free speech means, which is depressing of someone skilled & intelligent enough to work at the big G. Free speech is not the right to say what ever you want. It's the responsibility to stand behind and defend what you speak with real evidence.

I advocate for my beliefs on public accounts as well as internally - this account just happened to be what I was logged into is all. The simple fact is these publications are promoted because they are popular, making no comment on accuracy. A massive corporation, even if I trust them as my employer, should never have such massive influence on our public conversation. Popularity is a poor metric, but at least it's not…

The power to promote is just as dangerous if not more dangerous than the power to suppress because it is much harder to make a case against it but can have the exact same effect.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#388

Post by toastal »

CameronNemo wrote: post #281
a5withtrrs wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried pihole blacklisting AMP domains from my PiHole. It works in that I can't accidentally click on them, but it won't re-write them and I usually have to strip out the "amp." part myself. I haven't found a simple way that works on both my mobile and my desktop devices yet but I'd be interested in any recommendations.

There might have been a Firefox extension, but it probably did not make the cut for the new mobile version.

There were, and they sadly did not. Privacy Badger doesn't strip tracking tokens out of the URL anymore for me either.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#389

Post by Thorncorona »

dmitriid wrote: post #348
GuB-42 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not just faster. It also encourages sensible design and cuts down on the most annoying ad practices. I always say there are two parts in AMP, a very sensible set of guidelines for good design, enforced by code, and Google services. The first ones benefit users, the second benefit Google. The unfortunate thing is that when I hear complaints, it is more often about the former than the latter. Something about "cre…

It's not about "creative freedom". It's about Google forcing its will on the internet. - You want to be at the top of our search, in the search carousel? You must implement AMP. We don't care how fast or beautiful your website is. Oh, and only news sites may apply. - You want to show people the canonical URL? To show the source of the website? No. We will show that it comes from Google, we will actively try to discou…

That’s all and great, but as a user I simply don’t care. It’s like asking users to care about HTTP/2 or HTTP/3. Theoretically it matters, but in practice the only thing I care is that I can actually browse the web on my phone. And AMP for all it’s faults does a damn good job of making an ad infested web browsable on crappy internet connections.

Having it enforced by Google actually makes it easier to get funding by organizations since now administrators can’t simply just tell their devs to ignore standard.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#390

Post by why_only_15 »

dmitriid wrote: post #355
why_only_15 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't other search engines just hook into those same signals though?

Because they don't have the traffic/market share to do that. And it's not just search. Every single Google property ultimately feeds into Google's search engine.

The traffic and market share shouldn't matter if these are SEO signals inside the application itself, like in the HTML. Those are independent from traffic.
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