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Google is screwed, even if it wins its antitrust case

gizmodo.com

131–140 of 166 posts

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

#131
post #90

> Win or loose, Google is in trouble Did the recent layoff apocalypse hit Gizmodo editors too?

Perhaps the author has simply chosen to discard cognitive structures that will be made redundant in the new post-literacy age of ubiquitous ML language tools. Would that we all had such vision, and the courage to act on it.

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

#133
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.

Google is a public company so its shareholders want the stock price to be higher ASAP. Being an unquestionable leader in AI with a product as good as ChatGPT (and maybe an image model available to the public) would help in that goal.

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

#134
post #110
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 attent…

Yeah, the 1000 fans thing can totally work, depending on what your market looks like. $10/mo * 1000 is $120k/yr, which is a perfectly reasonable stable base from which to pursue a creative career (music, art, indie game dev, writing).

And if you can make it to 1000, it's pretty easy to make it to 2000, and then more - of course just getting to that 1000 can be a long slow challenge to be sure.

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

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, as a paid service who directly sells their primary product rather than a data mining, anti-privacy homunculus whose most famous product is merely a means to an end, an account and payment is required. This is strictly better than Google.

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

The problem is DuckDuckGo is very USA and English focused. I've switched to it myself long ago, but it's very frustrating when I search for things and it brings up American shops higher than anything else. I'm not going to 5,000km to go shopping. You move out of English it's even worse. For general tech searching it's on par with Google. But if you are looking for things locally I often find the need to switch back to Google.

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

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how businesses process payment. Any responsible finance department will call a hard no on that. (And from a consumer side, asking to pay with a gift card is usually a huge red flag that a scam is incoming)

I believe they mean a gift card for their service, as in they should offer gift cards. Not send us $50 worth of Google Play gift cards. https://www.amazon.com/Mullvad-VPN-Devices-Protect-Security/...

Yep

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

#138
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The problem is DuckDuckGo is very USA and English focused. I've switched to it myself long ago, but it's very frustrating when I search for things and it brings up American shops higher than anything else. I'm not going to 5,000km to go shopping. You move out of English it's even worse. For general tech searching it's on par with Google. But if you are looking for things locally I often find the need to switch back t…

It has a location toggle at the top of the results page. It works fine for me, and I’m not from an English-speaking country.

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

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>This kind of problem isn't just because of search, it's also because of content creators. See I think this becomes chicken/egg real quick too, though I do think Google is more to blame. Content creators are responding to the incentives google created. Think back to when sites would have all sorts of keywords buried in metadata and/or have blogs that were complete nonsense full of keywords that weren't easily findabl…

Yeah, but penalizing people based on metadata or keyword lists is incredibly easy. Compare that to trying to figure out which recipe site is keyword stuffing vs which happens to have a story by someone who really did journey to Tuscany to learn the perfect cacciucco recipe.

Sometimes I've fantasized about Google having human editorial that would evaluate these content farms as they grow and make the nuanced decisions of which to derank. But then, if they really did that, they'd get sued or regulated pretty quickly.

I feel weird arguing for Google's side since I actually do have a lot of criticisms and generally dislike Google search. I just think this content farm issue looks very thorny; humans are built to deceive each other and at some point of sophistication that gets very difficult to control.

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

#140
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the alternatives involve... no (automatic) monetization at all. This is 100% what it boils down to. Google is obviously not the only advertiser in town, but if the ad bubble pops, so does the free content economy on the internet. Some people will argue the internet would be better because of it, but the transition away from ad-supported viewership would decimate the web we know.

I'd argue the internet I liked most was decimated by the current free content economy, though. I'm not saying I disagree with you by any means; a lot of what we would lose would be a great shame. Only the strongest creators could probably find a way to stay alive, likely through more direct sponsorship (both Patreon and well, traditional direct sponsors. You already see this a ton on YouTube anyways.) I get that the…

Yea exactly. At this point I am checked out of the mass internet and the things I do use (other than HN I suppose) I’m glad to pay for.
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