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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

#261

Post by n42 »

rhizome wrote: post #257
n42 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is such an infuriating user experience. no, I did not mean, that’s why I typed it, damn it! I think they’ve even started ignoring my quoted search terms!

They are getting to be so terrible, what kind of bureaucracy motivates them to throw away their crown jewel? Is Adwords the only self-made product they have that actually works anymore? Maybe their business model is only Adwords and selling surveillance data, and our understanding simply hasn't caught up to that fact yet.

it's not that. it's the marriage of top down OKRs, politics driven performance reviews, and a seemingly unbounded pay scale

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

#262

Post by [deleted] »

imwillofficial wrote: post #256
endisneigh wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I, frankly, suspect you're a troll at this point. It's sad how any resistance and the resistor must be a troll. Even in your own video without adblock the ads display sparingly. If you count the instance you'll see that after reduction (meaning you take the average distance from the first link) the "correct" link is probably #3 or #2.

You have been caught lying, arguing, and moving the goal posts. Being accused of being a shill is a natural progression. You have done nothing to clear up misinformation, argue in good faith, or concede a disproven claim. All these are required for arguments in good faith.

[deleted]

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

#263

Post by endisneigh »

kbelder wrote: post #185
endisneigh wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The issue here is that I’m talking about literally the line break between ads and regular results. There are multiple folds - search widgets, instant results, etc.

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

#264

Post by ajosh »

slyzmud wrote: post #125
jws wrote: 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.

I agree with you 100%. I've had it for quite a while. When I see Youtube without being logged in, I really can't imagine using the at all with the current level of ads - it's gotten way worse in the past few years.

I also like having access to YouTube music but like so many things with streaming, you're not certain to get continued access to stuff you like. I've started buying MP3's of songs that I like again so that I don't have to worry that Google will stop carrying the music any more or raise prices on YouTube Premium to a level I don't like.

I have less and less trust for the big companies that provide these services so I'm focusing more on self-hosting and some form of ownership. It's not just MP3's. I'm also making sure that I'm using FOSS for my note taking (Joplin), backups (duplicati) and other such things. Some of this stuff is too valuable to me to risk losing access to.

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

#265

Post by endisneigh »

imwillofficial wrote: post #253
endisneigh wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally the fifth result is what they were looking for. they crop that out and complain on twitter. so yes, it's acceptable. use ad-block if it's not to you.

So we disagree. Showing me 4 ads before seeing something that is also a thinly veiled ad is not acceptable. Running other software to make search usable is also not acceptable. Combined with your misinformation spread in other threads of this topic, your actions appear to be shilling.

by what definition is it not acceptable exactly?

Don’t use Google, or any search engine for that matter, I’d you don’t like ads. Try out Kagi or Neeva.

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

#266

Post by colordrops »

tomatofrank wrote: post #201

Last night I watched a YouTube video that had a song in the background that I hadn't heard but really liked. I pulled up Shazam but it didn't recognize the song, so I took to Google. I entered the lyric and added the search terms "lyrics" and "r&b" at the end. Google returned 4 YouTube videos to songs that didn't contain the lyric, a link to a Boyz II Men song on Genius that didn't contain the lyric (good job Google,…

It's getting bad enough where I'll put in a two word search, and one of them is unique and the obvious main keyword, but not necessarily obscure, and somehow the first several results still don't have the word. It's frustrating to the extreme.

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

#267

Post by ajosh »

danuker wrote: post #106
jws wrote: 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…

Don't forget the lack of dislike counts, which makes it harder to distinguish good tutorials from scams shilling some service. Also, why are you not using uBlock origin?

Why not use both? You can support the content creator with a higher per-view rate and still block ads in other places.

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

#268

Post by nefitty »

colordrops wrote: post #266
tomatofrank wrote: post #201

Last night I watched a YouTube video that had a song in the background that I hadn't heard but really liked. I pulled up Shazam but it didn't recognize the song, so I took to Google. I entered the lyric and added the search terms "lyrics" and "r&b" at the end. Google returned 4 YouTube videos to songs that didn't contain the lyric, a link to a Boyz II Men song on Genius that didn't contain the lyric (good job Google,…

It's getting bad enough where I'll put in a two word search, and one of them is unique and the obvious main keyword, but not necessarily obscure, and somehow the first several results still don't have the word. It's frustrating to the extreme.

You can recreate this behavior with HN's Algolia search API. The common parameter that behaves how we expect is "query". Using "similarQuery" causes all sorts of weird behavior. I think it drops words until it find results, and considers each token optional.

It kinda gave me insight I to why Google is sucking so bad. Give us the option at least.

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

#269

Post by shiftpgdn »

heavyset_go wrote: post #235
tomatofrank wrote: post #201

Last night I watched a YouTube video that had a song in the background that I hadn't heard but really liked. I pulled up Shazam but it didn't recognize the song, so I took to Google. I entered the lyric and added the search terms "lyrics" and "r&b" at the end. Google returned 4 YouTube videos to songs that didn't contain the lyric, a link to a Boyz II Men song on Genius that didn't contain the lyric (good job Google,…

I'm still bitter that they've deprioritized results from SongMeanings.net in favor of garbage like Genius. The former is one of the only sources for lyrics from smaller acts, especially from the 90's to early 2010's. Since it's from the pre-Web 2.0 era, it's disappeared from Google's search results.

Same with Sheldon Brown’s website on bicycle maintenance. Much of the information on his site is still the best resource on the internet but instead Google would rather serve irrelevant results that show ads.
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