321–330 of 396 posts
> Google has an incentive to rank pages that contain Google ads because it makes them more revenue. Google has an incentive to rank profit-making sites higher so that they make more money. Is there evidence that they do this?
Google will have to reinvent itself or it will eventually destroy itself with negligence of its core business. There isn't yet critical mass of casual users who think Google sucks, all they think is that the Google is internet. That's their intellectual level.
>Google makes $40bn...If I can create something that just a tiny fraction of people find useful, then I can create a huge amount of value. You conflate two meanings of value: monetary value, and intrinsic value. Search engines are intrinsically but not monetarily valuable to users. Search engines are monetarily, but not intrinsically, valuable to advertisers. You can get into trouble when you conflate these two meani…
> It is surprisingly hard to extract monetary value from an intrinsically valuable solution. This is like saying that our entire economic system is backward ...
A better way to deal with this is to discover what the intrinsic value for the product is, allow the creator to give it away, and then subsidize the creator the value they generated.
The nice thing with this system is that we can transition to it really easily. There are already many Open Source projects that exist, all we need to do is ear-mark a certain sized pot, figure out the weights of existing products, and hand it out. And as the economy gets stronger, allow the pot to grow, and eventually there might not be a thing as closed software, as open software will always be able to generate more value than closed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly that is probably safer. Having a typo in the url could Easley give you a phishing link. However, I also have gotten fishing adds when looking websites up so it’s not cut and dry at all.
Easley, I have to ask, was that a typo or highlighting your point?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For clarification, “red queen” means a conflict between two or more entities where the cost of engagement grows, but the relative advantage does not change. Simply put, search engines have been at war with SEO for over 30-years, which has significantly raised the bar not only being a search engine, but producing content; not to mention knowing how to search for information. With the introduction of machine generated…
To your last point, I don’t quite agree. Google’s incentives are misaligned such that keeping you on Google.com just a little longer is better than not because you are more likely to click on an ad. But also yes the users and the UI both fail. When I used to search for something I would type in something like “gutter clog clean” but slowly started noticing that Google likes longer sentences like “how do I clean a clo…
Use Verbatim?
Disclaimer: I work for Google, though far away from Search. Regardless of search engine design, there's HUGE money in SEO. Any successful search engine will be gamed. Do you have the developer power to go red-queen against all the large companies in the world?
I think Google search is using the wrong approach. When I'm looking for e.g. a new camera, I want to use my network which I trust . E.g. I want to ask "what camera would HN recommend?" We should think more about how we can use trust as a basis for how we explore the internet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It is surprisingly hard to extract monetary value from an intrinsically valuable solution. This is like saying that our entire economic system is backward ...
It is. Capitalism relies on the basic system of supply and demand. When the marginal supply is free - the only proper price is zero - anything else isn't pure Capitalism. And so as free would mean no incentives, we give an even worse of a hack to deal with it, ownership. A better way to deal with this is to discover what the intrinsic value for the product is, allow the creator to give it away, and then subsidize the…
Obviously the problem is that those in charge of giving away money are very passive, and in fact put up large barriers (the onerous application process) for anyone wanting the money. This, to me, is absurd. The admins of such a fund should themselves be active in one or more areas of interest, such that they themselves should be approaching people like Justine and telling her, "Here, please take my money."
I don't know much about grants, but like most things that are broken I suspect there are perverse incentives here. For example, someone is probably investing that grant money, and if they give it away the money leaves the market, and that will make the admins sad. (I don't know if that's the case, but that's the kind of thing I would expect to see.)
Oh, another surprisingly effective thing people are doing are subscriptions to people you like. You see this particularly on twitch, and sometimes on youtube. People can and will give money to the creators they like! It's kind of amazing to me. I suppose the analog for people like Justine is Patreon. It's fascinating though that people will happily subscribe to an entertaining personality, but will happily ignore someone who toils at making incredible things behind closed doors (but still use their tools). The obvious solution is that all open source projects should become a source of entertainment.
Spam site operators have a huge incentive to get users to click on their links & provide them with ad-revenue
For Google, they could make things so much better by down-ranking sites that show ads
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It is surprisingly hard to extract monetary value from an intrinsically valuable solution. This is like saying that our entire economic system is backward ...
It is. Capitalism relies on the basic system of supply and demand. When the marginal supply is free - the only proper price is zero - anything else isn't pure Capitalism. And so as free would mean no incentives, we give an even worse of a hack to deal with it, ownership. A better way to deal with this is to discover what the intrinsic value for the product is, allow the creator to give it away, and then subsidize the…
>Google makes $40bn...If I can create something that just a tiny fraction of people find useful, then I can create a huge amount of value. You conflate two meanings of value: monetary value, and intrinsic value. Search engines are intrinsically but not monetarily valuable to users. Search engines are monetarily, but not intrinsically, valuable to advertisers. You can get into trouble when you conflate these two meani…
Google provides unlimited searches to users without charge. On the other side, google provides human attention to advertisers, and charges for it due to the scarce nature of attention. Sort of like a marketplace business.