Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 242 posts

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#91

Post by SamBam »

Foobar8568 wrote: post #63
GavinAnderegg wrote: post #2

Google's search product has become a shadow of its former self. Every year it seems harder to find what I'm looking for. The top half of the first search result page is now (potentially malicious) ads, and what follows is likely SEO spam. I need to add "reddit" or "stackoverflow" to half my searches these days so I'm not served nearly useless results. It's a sad decline from 10+ years ago when I'd type a half-formed…

Unfortunately reddit is spammed with promoters

I think this is truer and truer.

Part of the issue is our built-in bias towards thinking of other Reddit users (and HN and whoever) as people just like ourselves. That means we give undue weight to their recommendations.

I definitely find myself being more swayed by a single user's recommendation with maybe a few dozen upvotes, over SEO-gamed websites and Amazon reviews. But in reality, that's a ludicrous assumption, since advertisers knows it too, and it only takes 5-10 fake accounts to create that kind of pretend consensus.

In many ways, Reddit is far easier to spam.

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#92

Post by ilostmyshoes »

Alupis wrote: post #89
dahdum wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I need to add "reddit" or "stackoverflow" to half my searches these days It feels truly absurd how many queries I need to append "reddit" to get something useful. The web has changed but Google isn't keeping up.

This makes me laugh - I've found myself appending "reddit" to my search queries more and more frequently when looking for product or service reviews. The regular google results are filled with affiliate-link-driven ads disguised as product reviews. If you want to really know what people think about products, you have to go digging these days.

I do the same and even then you need to be careful about the astroturfing on reddit

corporatism is everywhere and infecting the web to enrich a few at the expense of everyone else

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#94

Post by acdha »

RajT88 wrote: post #14
waselighis wrote: post #3

All the more reason to use an adblocker. Online ads are the most common way that malware gets injected into otherwise trustworthy websites.

Yeah! I recall discovering recently my father had a coin miner malware on his laptop, which had been acting slow for a while (a year). Upon discovery, my mother gave him some hard side-eye. But I explained the whole malvertising thing, and that seemed to placate her. Don't get me wrong; he probably was looking at naughty pictures. But I actually think he's more likely to have gotten that from a legit site.

I’m reminded of the time I opened nytimes.com and the ad Google served started a download for a .exe file. It wasn’t well targeted to my Mac but if you do that to a million people the number who’ll think it’s a trustworthy site and run it will be greater than zero.

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#95

Post by acdha »

toss1 wrote: post #77
htrp wrote: post #27

> It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. - Upton Sinclair Google doesn't exactly care about this because they still get paid for the click. The malware companies are willing to bid extremely high for that single click (since they end up pwning your computer).

That'll work just fine until they trash their reputation with carp like this. Then, no one will use them, and they will have a hard time getting it back; they may still exist, but only as a husk of their former stature.

You’re not wrong but the manager making that call will have retired rich by then.

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#96

Post by realusername »

beefield wrote: post #13
realusername wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They pretty much lost the war against content farms already. I'm not sure the content indexing & crawling model they have is even adapted to the current web.

What makes you think they ever waged a war? I never saw any indication.

I think they did at the beginning, there's been a lot of algorithm changes before but once they realized they were losing, they just gave up.

The incentives are just not aligned anyways, Google Search gets its money from the ad links on the top, they don't really lose anything if the links below are half terrible...

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#97

Post by jeffbee »

JonChesterfield wrote: post #70
jeffbee wrote: post #62

The actual lesson here appears to be don't use Microsoft Windows.

I'm seeing a consensus on do use Microsoft bing which just can't be right

Under the same banner of just staying away from popular malware targets, it would be consistent to choose bing or DDG while searching from your web browser running on OpenBSD/riscv64. Just confuse the hell out of the bad guys.

But, the big flaw in the article is the author fails to suggest a better alternative. DDG raises 2 malware sites in the top 10 organic (I assume) results for "tor download". You're not safe from this stuff anywhere.

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#98

Post by izacus »

flenserboy wrote: post #88
arthurofcharn wrote: post #34

Google was once considered trustworthy. It never was, but we thought it trustworthy. Where can you find a trustworthy source for software? Depends on your platform. Linux: Your package manager. In my case, apt. Mac: Apple has an app store of its own. Use that, or one of the BSD package management systems ported over. Ios: Apple app store is decently curated. Android: Google's app store is terribly curated. Give up no…

And governments are doing their best to break the app stores, destroying even the basic safely mechanisms such stores can offer. This should be taken as instructive, but is ignored by most.

What a strange argument - with this they're actually opening the market to stores that will ensure secure products like F-Droid with their guarantee for opensource. If anything, the current situation where BOTH Apple and Google store are ridden with malware and poor software doesn't work.

We didn't fix SourceForge problems by allowing a megacorp to kill all competition and enshrine that cesspool, but by creating new sources of software.

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#99

Post by izacus »

justinclift wrote: post #67
arthurofcharn wrote: post #34

Google was once considered trustworthy. It never was, but we thought it trustworthy. Where can you find a trustworthy source for software? Depends on your platform. Linux: Your package manager. In my case, apt. Mac: Apple has an app store of its own. Use that, or one of the BSD package management systems ported over. Ios: Apple app store is decently curated. Android: Google's app store is terribly curated. Give up no…

On windows, Chocolatey (chocolatey.org) also seems to have a decent reputation. As does PortableApps (portableapps.com).

scoop is IMO a bit better on Windows (mostly because it focuses on portable software), but Chocolatey is a good fallback.

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#100

Post by amcoy37 »

angelbar wrote: post #68
arthurofcharn wrote: post #34

Google was once considered trustworthy. It never was, but we thought it trustworthy. Where can you find a trustworthy source for software? Depends on your platform. Linux: Your package manager. In my case, apt. Mac: Apple has an app store of its own. Use that, or one of the BSD package management systems ported over. Ios: Apple app store is decently curated. Android: Google's app store is terribly curated. Give up no…

For windows you could start with Chocolatey and check filehippo

Also consider the now built-in package manager: Winget
Post reply on HN