Earlier quoted context omitted.
Advertisement is immoral and totally unnecessary to have a profitable business.
I'm curious to know which profitable companies never advertise.
Sourcehut, as a recent example.
Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility
571–580 of 748 posts
Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility
#572Earlier quoted context omitted.
"What's immoral about... spreading information about you and your business?" Non-consensually forcing anyone into anything is wrong. Advertising violates the NAP. "But advertising itself is immoral?" Indeed.
"non-consensually forcing anything into anyone" You have a perverveted view of "forcing" if you think sharing information is, as it sounds like you seem to be saying, the equivalent of rape. If I say something you disagree with... I'm not violating a "Non-Aggression Principle" - unless you think that opinions make you weak (I believe diverse thought makes you stronger - can't get new ideas without communication). And…
"You have a perverveted view of "forcing" if you think sharing information is, as it sounds like you seem to be saying, the equivalent of rape."
Something doesn't have to be rape to be non-consensually forced upon someone; consider slavery, or compulsory schooling, or non-free Javascript. A well-documented method of torture is obscuring a captive's vision and looping a single song on repeat.
"how do you pair the fact that you "forcing" your opinion on me about my opinion on advertising goes against your own principle? Isn't it kinda... a hypocritical blackhole of an opinion?"
You asked for me to share the opinion, and as such, have given consent. Wider, though, this is a message board. The point is to share on-topic messages. This includes opinions, but does not include ads.
Advertising at its core is manipulation, not sharing information. Most advertisements grant the viewer net-negative information.
Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility
#573Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apparently, Google Flight Search is not even close to the best alternative.1 https://www.frommers.com/slideshows/848046-the-10-best-and-w... This is interesting because I always thought Matrix from ITA Software, a company Google acquired in 2010, was quite useful. Wonder if links to Skiplagged get subjugated in Google SERPs. If Google thinks it can replace other websites by providing better alternatives, that's great…
I’ve used a number of those others, and at least via my personal scoring system, google flights is still by far the number one. Your link prioritizes very different things than I do, for example one of its top scoring sites has as a con that you can’t filter out 10+ hour layovers).
"We also ignored any itinerary that would be hell to fly-basically anything increasing total travel time by more than half through excessively long layovers, too many stops, or flying way out of your way just to change planes. Airlines may think that makes for a viable plan, but we don't."
Am I reading this wrong or does this indicate Frommer also prioritises avoiding long layovers.
(I dislike the inclusion of the long layover options too but I have always thought the reason the sites include them is that they actually sell. I once met someone who took these long layover flights on popular routes that always have many shorter options, so I know such people exist.)
Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility
#574Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, obviously, you as a user are free to find another search engine. However, you as a creator are not free to find another universe in which the leading search provider does not use their position of influence to squash any competing products by ranking their own products higher.
But that’s not an argument for making Google a public utility. That’s an argument that they are being anti-competitive. That’s a whole other discussion. And even then, the question isn’t are competitors being harmed, but are consumers being harmed. So long as their products are free, it’s hard to argue that consumers are suffering harm. (I haven’t heard privacy brought up as a legal measure of harm to consumers, whic…
> So long as their products are free, it’s hard to argue that consumers are suffering harm.
It kills competition since most of them are financed by an unrelated service (Googles ad network) and without competition we get such nice things like randomized automated life time bans, non existent customer service, products that are randomly killed, overly anti competitive licensing agreements (Android apparently cannot survive on its own merits) etc. . Privacy is just one of many many issues.
Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility
#575But I have multiple choices for email, search, video hosting and browsers. I don’t have any choice for water, electricity, sewer, on any other public utility. I am sure there are a bunch of people on here that don’t use any Google products and are using DuckDuckGo, Firefox, ProtonMail, Vimeo. There are many choices.
There is market competition in some utilities depending on where you live
Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility
#576Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one is forcing you to use an electrical company. You could always power your house with a bicycle generator. Therefore, electrical companies shouldn't be regulated as public utilities.
Yes, you have to use the municipal electricity. You cannot lay your own power lines, it's illegal. And in most urban areas, you can't run your own generator for emissions restrictions. You also can't power your home with a bicycle. Even champion bicyclists output 50-100 watts. Using Bing, DuckDuckGo, or other Google alternatives are incomparably easier than not using utilities like electricity and plumbing. I struggl…
You could just create battery trailer to power your house and drive to the next Tesla charging station with it whenever it runs low. No need for power lines or any power generation in your backyard. Maybe someone should propose that trailer idea to Elon? Tesla already produces everything necessary to take yourself of the grid, it only needs to be bundled up right.
Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility
#577If we ignore all this culture war bullshit for a minute there's a really fascinating issue here. The concrete issue is flight search. When you google "flight from a to b", rather then seeing search results linking to websites for flight search, the first thing you see is the results of Google's own flight search. Is that wrong? What about image search? When you search for "skyline berlin", you'll see images of berlin…
> When you search for "skyline berlin", you'll see images of berlin's skyline, before you see links to other image search sites.
What's next, should they also show Bing and DuckDuckGo search results when you search for an arbitrary query too?
The goal of Google isn't to link you to websites, it's to get you to your information as quickly as possible. Said information could be a website, just as it can be an image, a flight or a single sentence pulled into an Answer Box.
Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility
#578But I have multiple choices for email, search, video hosting and browsers. I don’t have any choice for water, electricity, sewer, on any other public utility. I am sure there are a bunch of people on here that don’t use any Google products and are using DuckDuckGo, Firefox, ProtonMail, Vimeo. There are many choices.
I'm surprised I haven't seen much in the responses to this comment that the issue isn't so much that consumers have other options (though given how high Google's search reach is, how relevant is that if hardly anyone does), it's that for most businesses your option is either have a strong search presence on Google or go out of business. There is just no viable path to avoid Google as a business when they control 80+…
> ...most businesses your option is either have a strong search presence on Google or go out of business.
Your perspective is a bit skewed here towards the software world. There are businesses on every street-corner in the US, and for that matter world, without any meaningful internet presence or need for great search engine ranking. And for that matter, consumer products and consumer-facing businesses are only a subset of the $20T+ economy of the US.
Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility
#579If we ignore all this culture war bullshit for a minute there's a really fascinating issue here. The concrete issue is flight search. When you google "flight from a to b", rather then seeing search results linking to websites for flight search, the first thing you see is the results of Google's own flight search. Is that wrong? What about image search? When you search for "skyline berlin", you'll see images of berlin…
Apparently, Google Flight Search is not even close to the best alternative.1 https://www.frommers.com/slideshows/848046-the-10-best-and-w... This is interesting because I always thought Matrix from ITA Software, a company Google acquired in 2010, was quite useful. Wonder if links to Skiplagged get subjugated in Google SERPs. If Google thinks it can replace other websites by providing better alternatives, that's great…
>” The index should be a public resource not controlled by one company that can see what users are searching for and engage in "front-running".”
The thing is, it’s the index they built with the technology they built. Google is not the only index. To build a public index, you’d need to have public crawlers, which would bring a whole boatload more questions / regulation / debate. Google’s search ranking is part of the secret sauce that they try very hard to obscure, while hinting at how to be good at it; basically: provide something valuable to visitors, and you’ll rank highly, at least in theory. Get caught cheating and get blacklisted.
Flight info is already public. Ticket prices are not, and vary tons based on all the deals and schemes out there. That’s not Google’s fault, but the fault (if one views it that way) of the airlines playing pricing games. Their business model relies on getting everyone to pay the highest price per seat they can get from a customer, so they benefit from not being open about pricing. Their goal is also to fill flights with paying customers or paying cargo, or the most profitable mix, depending on many factors. Again, not Google’s fault.
Google is in a position to front-run results and provide an experience that other companies cannot by virtue of users already being on their site using their search. It doesn’t seem reasonable to compare Google to a travel site, as it’s pretty clear that one wouldn’t expect e.g. Expedia to list Travelocity results alongside their own with equal priority.
I’m usually really against monopolistic behavior, as many companies use it to screw users and maximize profits (e.g. Comcast). Google isn’t in the same league IMO because they behave a lot more charitably — if it were Comcast running Google, I would wholly expect them to completely de-list every competing travel site and work on lobbying the government to get those competitors shut down, while channeling tax dollars paid to build infrastructure into their own pockets.
It’s a dumb lawsuit that will go nowhere. The lawsuit is disingenuous as they know it will fail. The true purpose is political lip service — accomplish nothing while claiming to be doing something against a perceived enemy.
Re: Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility
#580If we ignore all this culture war bullshit for a minute there's a really fascinating issue here. The concrete issue is flight search. When you google "flight from a to b", rather then seeing search results linking to websites for flight search, the first thing you see is the results of Google's own flight search. Is that wrong? What about image search? When you search for "skyline berlin", you'll see images of berlin…
As a content creator rich snippets are such a bugbear. If you don't play the game then someone else's content and name shows up. If you do, there's a huge chance people get what they need and never visit your site. It's a Google wins, consumer wins, creator loses situation.
I would argue that bad behavior (“bad” = existing more to get ad revenue than to deliver valuable information to users) made this a viable business model for Google. I don’t love snippets, and sometimes they’re hilariously wrong, but I’d rather get wrong info from a snippet vs having a site waste my time and beg me to sign up, blocking the info from view, forcing me to “open in app”, only to find that it was bad info anyway…
Do companies exist to make things that are valuable for users, or do users exist to make money for companies?