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For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

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Re: For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

#181

The Facebook stock debacle from yesterday makes me think that maybe there is a limit to how user-hostile a tech giant can be before it really starts to hurt their bottom line. For a while it seemed like companies like FB had captured enough of the market that they seemed impervious to backlash from their many controversies, too big to fail in a way. It’s too early to tell if this is the beginning of FB’s demise, but…

I remember digg. Network effects can turn on you.

Re: For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

#182
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…a limit to how user-hostile a tech giant can be before it really starts to hurt their bottom line… Reading that line I just realized that google lost me as a YouTube viewer in the past two weeks. I used to follow a bunch of ~100k subscriber channels that produced content every couple of weeks on building things and how to build things. I'd generally watch one or two 10-30 minute videos a day. They've cranked the ads…

Have you tried Youtube premium? We always say companies should move out of the ad revenue model and start charging for the services instead of pushing more ads. For me, paying Youtube premium has been a great decision.

Here’s the problem - if you don’t already watch a lot of YouTube the non pay version is such a bad experience that you avoid watching on it so you’d be unlikely to want to pay for it.

Re: For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

#183

The Facebook stock debacle from yesterday makes me think that maybe there is a limit to how user-hostile a tech giant can be before it really starts to hurt their bottom line. For a while it seemed like companies like FB had captured enough of the market that they seemed impervious to backlash from their many controversies, too big to fail in a way. It’s too early to tell if this is the beginning of FB’s demise, but…

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Re: For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

#185
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how search results for "car rentals new york" look like on my display, there are no organic results above the fold. https://i.imgur.com/CFeWDY1.png As for your question, there is no point in trying to replicate results for the same query, search results and the displayed ads can wildly differ for the same query based on a large number of factors.

Quoted post unavailable.

That's never been the definition. The fold is the bottom of the viewport on initial load, meaning nothing below the fold is viewable without scrolling. This is an analog to the fold in a newspaper, hiding anything below it.

It seems like most of the claims you've made in the this thread are false.

Re: For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

#186
post #150

Many people here suggests other services, including services you can pay for to bash Google. The reality is that Google offered Google Contributor and now offers YouTube premium but most people prefer free content with ads. And that is fine. I find very surprising the HN folks complaining about the tech companies making ads-based money for their services when they are not willing to pay for the ad-free version. It is…

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Re: For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

#187
post #2

Yeah I’ve noticed this too. But also the rest of the front page is often either seo spam (like those Pinterest links which catch whatever search term you’ve used) or shopping sites. I’ve found google search to be increasingly hostile to its customers. I guess we’re not the customers. Use duckduckgo or something else.

You're not duckduckgo's customer either (their primary revenue source is keyword based advertising), or the customer of anything else you don't pay for. The only one I know of that at least plans to have a simple two-way relationship with search users as their customers is Kagi. Currently it's in free beta with a waitlist (took a week for me). When they go live they intend it to be a paid, subscription service with n…

I am on Kagi Beta but IMO they do not have a valid monetisation strategy that I would pay for. Their current pricing model is planned to be $30 a month for an 'all you can eat' subscription, or $10 a month for a 'lite' membership that gives you 20 searches per day and then charges you $0.02 per search after that on a pay-as-you-go model (but if you check your search history, you may be suprised how many searches you actually do!). Users who join the $10 lite plan for instance and then do 70 searches a day (I hit much more than this during a full day of programming!) would get hit with an overage bill of $25 at the end of the month, as well as the next months 'lite' charges of $10.

On the 70 searches point too, if you search for "business news" and then click the news360 tab to get news results, I believe this is actually counted as 2 searches so would get charged at 4 cents if in the overages category.

When I searched up I thought maybe $5 a month, or possibly $10 at a push, but $30+ will be too much for mass market adoption in my opinion. I also think there is an inevitable situation that someone searches a lot and suddenly finds themselves getting a $100 bill after they signed up for $10 a month!

Unfortunately there isn't a way around the price too from an architecture perspective because it's a high cost engine to run - the costs are driven by the fact that Kagi uses the paid Google and Bing api's, then adds a bit of it's own index and instant answers, but the Google and Bing API's both charge quite a lot per request (c$0.015 per request).

Search quality is usually pretty good (until it isn't), and it's getting better as it's manually tweaked to meet common queries, but the maps search is pretty much unusable. The search doesn't seem to "understand" queries in the same way Google does, particularly ones that are semantically hard (despite the results coming from google, Kagi reshuffles them). The founder, Vlad, seems pretty great though and is very active in the discord community. I really wish them luck, and particularly that they manage to crack the cost/pricing challenge they have.

However I have gone back to Google with adblock as my daily driver as I just didn't get the same quality of results, and found myself going back to Google enough times to make it frustrating. I appreciate it is a beta though, and that it will only get better over time.

Re: For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

#188
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope they penalize websites with heavy tracking or advertising. We might get back to a sane web if this takes off. They can grow their market by offering 10 free searches a day, and I think that would be enough to entice a lot of folks to switch. Offer a paid API, and I'd bet they'd have a real growth story.

"I hope they penalize websites with heavy tracking or advertising." I hope they give me a easy way, to set my own priorities (but I would choose that option).

I'm on the beta and it has both of these things.

You can choose to boost particular sites, or to down-rank sites with trackers.

Re: For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

#189
post #178

The Facebook stock debacle from yesterday makes me think that maybe there is a limit to how user-hostile a tech giant can be before it really starts to hurt their bottom line. For a while it seemed like companies like FB had captured enough of the market that they seemed impervious to backlash from their many controversies, too big to fail in a way. It’s too early to tell if this is the beginning of FB’s demise, but…

Their bottom line was hurt by Apple, not by their anti consumer policies.

It isn't an either or situation. Personally I used to watch Youtube quite a bit more but barely watch it at all these days thanks to their oppressive censorship policies.

Re: For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

#190
post #117
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uBlock Origin available on iOS? Please explain!

AdGuard though there’s some limitations on the number of rules.

AdGuard on your iOS devices and AdGuard DNS servers on your whole network is the key to ad-free bliss.
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