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Google is screwed, even if it wins its antitrust case

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101–110 of 166 posts

Re: Google is screwed, even if it wins its antitrust case

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DuckDuckGo is 100% privacy focused, free, and doesn’t require an account or credit card to use.

They are privacy focused in as much as they don't track you themselves, they just hand you off to Microsoft to be tracked. https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/24/ddg-microsoft-tracking-blo... Their founder is also on record as "down ranking misinformation", which is not a judgment call I want my search engine making. Relevance and truth are two different things.

> Their founder is also on record as "down ranking misinformation"

https://mashable.com/article/duckduckgo-search-engine-russia...

Re: Google is screwed, even if it wins its antitrust case

#102
post #14

Google is probably screwed without it. Even if ad-tech isn't exactly a bubble, I strongly believe it is overvalued even still. Furthermore, the product that made their name is thoroughly lost. I dread Google Search today. If I found something on Google yesterday, I have no idea if I'll be able to locate it through the sea of blog SPAM and SEO garbage tomorrow. Google web search strongly favors big websites when somet…

> I have no idea if I'll be able to locate it through the sea of blog SPAM and SEO garbage tomorrow If I have to sift through one more useless AI-generated/copy-paste article where they spend half the damn thing explaining the most basic stuff and then still not answering my question (or giving a simple "yes/no"), I'm going to lose it. It's not even just technical answers. I have to basically type "...reddit" or some…

This kind of problem isn't just because of search, it's also because of content creators. I believe what all content creators quickly learn is, on any given topic, the funnel is extremely wide on the most introductory knowledge and then becomes uselessly narrow as you drill into specific info.

To use a specific example, the other day I was trying to learn more about programming shaders. There is an unending number of basic level tutorials: what is a shader? There are probably 500,000 people searching for that topic. But if I want to figure out a UV scrolling texture, I'm screwed, there's almost nothing. Because the audience for that is maybe 500 people.

There's just no financial (or even reputational!) incentive for anyone to write an article / make a video on something requiring deeper expertise. There is stuff out there, of course, created by the tiny minority of passionate enthusiasts or dedicated professionals. Google is really searching for a needle in a very, very large haystack. And I think Google (and other search) has been more and more challenged by that over the years as the internet moved from a niche enthusiast place to a mass market place. Particularly when all the hay is spending massive amounts of effort on trying to pretend to be a needle.

tl;dr I despise using Google (or DuckDuckGo) these days but I don't think all the blame should be assigned to the engines, they're actually facing a tough problem. (Not that you personally were saying that, but this is mainly a thread of hating on Google.)

Re: Google is screwed, even if it wins its antitrust case

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are privacy focused in as much as they don't track you themselves, they just hand you off to Microsoft to be tracked. https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/24/ddg-microsoft-tracking-blo... Their founder is also on record as "down ranking misinformation", which is not a judgment call I want my search engine making. Relevance and truth are two different things.

> Their founder is also on record as "down ranking misinformation" https://mashable.com/article/duckduckgo-search-engine-russia...

Also here, straight from the horse's mouth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33247856

The sketchy and indirect way they engage with this criticism put me off of ever trusting DDG.

Re: Google is screwed, even if it wins its antitrust case

#104

The article doesn't seem to back up its headline at all. Google is under antitrust investigation for ads , while it talks about the threat to the company being AI . The main point of the article is: > It would be a lot easier Google could move fast and break things... But with the full force of the US government bearing down on it, the search giant can’t do that now... Google will need to conduct itself slowly and te…

One of the potential issues a lot of people are speculating about is the lower impression counts. For example - when trying to write a script using some api's I'm not super familiar with, I might do 6+ google searches. This will be similar for a lot of fields when trying to find an answer to something, news, other research, etc. That means you're loading a fresh page of ads every search AND all the ads on those sites…

Honestly I don't think it's going to make much of a difference.

The real money is in ads that are targeted to a search -- whether you're asking Search or a chatbot for "best fleece half-zip for men" you'll get shown the same ads targeted to that.

While if you're asking it to write a script for you... you probably were to busy to be even looking at or clicking the ads Google was showing anyways back when you were looking for Stack Overflow answers, no matter if it took 100 searches. (There's also nothing stopping Google from showing you 3 new ads before each new chatbot response.)

I have full faith in Google figuring out how to insert just as many ads as before. ;)

Re: Google is screwed, even if it wins its antitrust case

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their founder is also on record as "down ranking misinformation" https://mashable.com/article/duckduckgo-search-engine-russia...

Also here, straight from the horse's mouth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33247856 The sketchy and indirect way they engage with this criticism put me off of ever trusting DDG.

Thanks!

Re: Google is screwed, even if it wins its antitrust case

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the potential issues a lot of people are speculating about is the lower impression counts. For example - when trying to write a script using some api's I'm not super familiar with, I might do 6+ google searches. This will be similar for a lot of fields when trying to find an answer to something, news, other research, etc. That means you're loading a fresh page of ads every search AND all the ads on those sites…

Honestly I don't think it's going to make much of a difference. The real money is in ads that are targeted to a search -- whether you're asking Search or a chatbot for "best fleece half-zip for men" you'll get shown the same ads targeted to that. While if you're asking it to write a script for you... you probably were to busy to be even looking at or clicking the ads Google was showing anyways back when you were look…

> I have full faith in Google figuring out how to insert just as many ads as before. ;)

Oh they will I'm sure - I'm just not sure if they'll make _as much_ or not. Basically the question is if they can recover the cost per impression money to cost per click IMO.

Or maybe they pivot to something way worse - like in-content ads. Oh man imagine "best fleece half-zip for men" - "The most highly recommended and best option is the [insert marketing here but make it sound great and natural]".

But yeah I highly doubt their existence is in jeopardy or anything like that.

Re: Google is screwed, even if it wins its antitrust case

#107
post #99
post #9

I'm not so sure AI is as big a threat as Google perceives it to be; back in 2009 the HUGE EXISTENTIAL THREAT was Social, therefore Google+, but that came and went and Google's growth continued unabated. That said, I do see a place for language-model driven search. And I shudder to think that language models will be specifically coerced, bribed, and have ingrained in their brains only what advertisers want. If you tho…

It didn't turn out to be existential, but they absolutely lost the Social "war" and it's costing them billions: Facebook owns a large chunk of all ad revenue now, in no small part because of this. Not that I'm complaining - the less that's under a mega-conglomerate, the better things tend to be. But it was and is a gigantic failure for Google, possibly their largest ever.

>Facebook owns a large chunk of all ad revenue now

Facebook rode the wave of open 3P consumer data which is now closing everywhere, from DMA to iOS restrictions. That's why they're trying desperately to pivot to the metaverse, so they can use first party data. Facebook is currently experiencing an existential threat.

Social media diminished to algortihmic media (e.g. TikTok) which will likely diminish to AI media sooner rather than later.

Re: Google is screwed, even if it wins its antitrust case

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I googled Kagi, found their link… Not only is it required to create an account to use their service, they want a credit card to bill as well! Hard pass.

What would you prefer? Anonymous payments? And regardless of payment method, how would you avoid creating an account to tie the payment to?

Payment via digital gift cards sold on Amazon, e.g. Mullvad

Granted, this would probably be a very miniscule amount of their users.

Re: Google is screwed, even if it wins its antitrust case

#109
post #38

I think the opposite: Google will do great. Google+Deepmind's ML research groups are leading everyone. While it's true that they are late in getting something like ChatGPT to market, I think it was a wakeup call and it will be good for their ad revenues once they do. When they release it, they'll know much more about users' intent than from a simple search engine query and users will stay on their properties for long…

> While it's true that they are late in getting something like ChatGPT to market

Are they? ChatGPT is by all means a loss leader; I don't see why Google would need a halo AI product right now.

Re: Google is screwed, even if it wins its antitrust case

#110
post #37
post #14

Google is probably screwed without it. Even if ad-tech isn't exactly a bubble, I strongly believe it is overvalued even still. Furthermore, the product that made their name is thoroughly lost. I dread Google Search today. If I found something on Google yesterday, I have no idea if I'll be able to locate it through the sea of blog SPAM and SEO garbage tomorrow. Google web search strongly favors big websites when somet…

> The only thing I really have any strong affection for is YouTube, and the people and content that made the platform special are constantly unhappy with it's corporate direction, not to mention the utter lack of support, claiming and affirming in appeals stupid pointless crap like "you said a naughty word in the first ten seconds of the video" when anyone with working ears can easily verify they did not. This is mos…

Big YouTubers have seen the writing on the wall, and have been diversifying income streams for years. A lot of artists are migrating towards the "patron" model (think Renaissance patronage, but crowd-sourced) using tools like Patreon or Liberapay. This strikes me as inherently more pure than throwing videos at Google's algorithm to see which one can bring home the biggest slice of automatic-ad-revenue pie.

The attention economy is doomed, too many people are online now for it to be viable. Patronage and connecting with followers will come to dominate. Not to oversimplify, but there's a theory that all an artist needs to be financially stable is 1,000 true fans chipping in a few dollars a month. Google's YouTube middleware currently occupies a comfortable niche in the bringup process required to meet that figure... but they're ultimately nonessential.

As the bubble shrinks, creators will look back and wonder why they ever bothered driving millions of random people toward a platform that mostly pays out to Google.

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