11–20 of 227 posts
Even more reason to switch to other search engines such as DuckDuckGo.
Is DuckDuckGo better at this or just a smaller target people ignore? A couple quick searches didn’t turn up anything, but sure seems like they’re vulnerable to the same attack vector.
I teach everyone in my family to never trust the first few sponsored results now matter how convincing they may be. As far as I’m concerned Google know exactly what they’re doing and are actively complicit in perpetuating online scams against one family and friends. Are we seriously supposed to believe a company of their size, with their talent pool, and their money, can’t filter out such blatantly obvious crap? Sure…
Just so we're clear, there are no "sponsored results" on Google. There are results, and there are ads. It matters because if you lose the distinction you will lose the ability to remember what "sponsored results" were. On Yahoo! search, all of the results were paid. You paid more for a higher position. This dubious service was provided by Overture, and every search engine except Google was a customer of Overture's te…
1. https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/23/squint-and-youll-click-it/
> Muldoon didn’t respond to a question about why the ads were able to violate Google’s policy. I thought it was obvious by now that Google is a money train, and no one is watching the tracks. Their main distinctions as a Fortune 500 company are avoiding human contact and abandoning projects.
Even more reason to switch to other search engines such as DuckDuckGo.
Is DuckDuckGo better at this or just a smaller target people ignore? A couple quick searches didn’t turn up anything, but sure seems like they’re vulnerable to the same attack vector.
"I'm unsure if the competition have solved this problem that I tried and verified they don't have." Just seems like a pretty terrible defense of a big tech company that definitely hasn't solved that problem that they absolutely do have and know it will defraud people.
Remember the old days when google had their ads clearly and obviously marked, off to the side of your search results so as to minimize the potential for confusing ads with results? Yeah they decided there was more money in shaking down people to claim top spot when people specifically search for them. You search for coke, the top result is pepsi if they pay google. Pay google so people get what they search for. Make it more likely to click on the paid ad than the search result for the exact same thing. People getting ripped off is collateral damage, not worth sacrificing shakedown proceeds to avoid actively helping fraud. It stinks to high heaven and Google employees know this.
"We haven't fixed their grift. That fixing it might impact ours is totally unrelated." --Google
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just so we're clear, there are no "sponsored results" on Google. There are results, and there are ads. It matters because if you lose the distinction you will lose the ability to remember what "sponsored results" were. On Yahoo! search, all of the results were paid. You paid more for a higher position. This dubious service was provided by Overture, and every search engine except Google was a customer of Overture's te…
Absolutely. Google's making ads look like search results [1], but let's bring up an example from the early-to-mid 2000s [2] because that's extra relevant here when today's relevant search engines put ads confusingly at the top of your search results. The ad isn't a "sponsored result" but it's fair to say the results are sponsored (and confusingly so). 1. https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/23/squint-and-youll-click-it/ 2.…
Even more reason to switch to other search engines such as DuckDuckGo.
If at some point adblocking is defeated I'm up for a very difficult crash landing into reality.
[0]: almost; top results can be scams of course; but it's rare.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is DuckDuckGo better at this or just a smaller target people ignore? A couple quick searches didn’t turn up anything, but sure seems like they’re vulnerable to the same attack vector.
DuckDuckGo shows me three scams in the ads at the top of the page when I search "employer ID number".
[1] https://www.thebalancesmb.com/how-to-find-your-ein-4768994
[2] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/employer-identification...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employer_Identification_Number
And at the same time that Google supposedly can’t catch these guys, they randomly suspend my ads account without even an explanation. And of course no recourse or way of getting in touch with a human.