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

Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

pandodaily.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 301 posts

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#191

Post by myko »

Stormbringer wrote: post #175
redthrowaway wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook's ongoing record is one of introducing opt-out products that harm user privacy. This is just a matter of preference. Nobody is hurt by SPYW, and it's far easier to disable than many of facebook's updates. The issue with Facebook's changes to privacy was not that they are opt-out, but that they were opt-out and significantly impacted user privacy. Opt-out services on their own may be annoying, but they aren't…

Google also has an ongoing PR problem with regard to privacy, with Eric Schmidt (sp? the recently ex-ceo dude) going on record as saying he doesn't believe in privacy. Facebook at least pretends to care about privacy and then screws the user, whereas Google just skips to step B

Google has a team whose job is to make sure privacy needs of the user are met: http://www.dataliberation.org/

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#192

Post by dminor »

ArcticCelt wrote: post #147
danilocampos wrote: post #56

A few decades from now, when someone writes up an HBS case study on Google, how will it read? My suspicion is that Google is going to treat us to a very painful object lesson: what happens to your business when you compromise the values of a beloved core product. Here's the thing: having the most complete, most accurate, most relevant search results means never having to say you're sorry. You can add ads, you can do…

Just to confirm what you say about Google trying to be too smart I just searched for "SPYW" because to be honest I have no idea what is that word or abbreviation. So Google decided that I am searching for the word SPYWare and I was no able to find a definition for SPYW. That's why I am reading the comments in case I can guess what it is.

I didn't have any problems with this search. Perhaps it autocompleted to "spyware" and you didn't notice?

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#193

Post by myko »

misterbwong wrote: post #30

I wonder why Bing/Yahoo isn't making a fuss about this. It'd be a good time for them to capitalize on the bad pub.

Bing has been doing a similar thing with Facebook for awhile haven't they? I'm not sure they could really make a large fuss without seeming entirely hypocritical. Of course I think Facebook and Twitter are a bit hypocritical for complaining about this while trying to charge Google for the data that would allow their products to be added successfully to SPYW.

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#194

Post by loceng »

This has nothing to do with "if you don't get SPYW"

Search Plus Your World itself can change and evolve.

All of this negative media is being perpetuated by Twitter and Facebook who are losing massive amounts of free traffic they used to get.

If Twitter and Facebook want to be guaranteed to be in Google's results, then they should guarantee that Google/Google+, etc. show up in Twitter and Facebook's search, though that's probably not a very good deal for Google - and Facebook wouldn't do that because of their closed/controlled ecosystem, and Twitter wouldn't want that traffic leak either.

I would point this to being hypocritical and just trying to stir up negative public opinion about the whole thing - because it's all Twitter/Facebook are able to do.

Don't you think Google is tracking the effects of their changes?

And they likely did small tests first too. They can still measure the user's experience and maybe it actually is providing results people care and benefit from just as much.

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#195

Post by bjdixon »

CJWelle wrote: post #108
bjdixon wrote: post #2

So, what are people using as alternatives these days? I use gmail, google talk and google.com exclusively for email, chat and search. If (for arguments sake) I wanted to switch what is there of similar quality that still be around and relevant in 3 or 4 years?

I see many great suggestions here, but calendar replacement has not been suggested yet.

oh yeah, awesome point. I'm totally dependent on the calendar. I share with my gf and friends... That's a tough one. Why google, why? ='(

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#196

Post by 6ren »

dkarl wrote: post #187
6ren wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google Search automatically returns results in the language you choose for Google product text, but you can also request results in many other languages. Try setting German at "For Google text" (first on language preference page). I did, and got several german hits. Whereas, merely adding "german" for the search results (second on language preferences page) didn't add any. It's a hassle, but a solution is to change…

Google is impressing me. Really? All that to get what I used to get for free? Not to mention that German is just one language, and "translated foreign pages" sounds like it might search the translated text, which is nice, unless it doesn't deliver results in untranslated pages, which leaves me wondering whether Google translates all pages or just some, and whether it's sufficiently integrated with Google Translate to…

Wow, I go to some trouble to research your question for you, but you reply in complaint without trying it out. e.g. try it with more than one language selected for search. You can also test your questions with specific queries (e.g. using terms that seem unlikely to be translated). Also, consider that you didn't know what results Google wasn't returning in the first place, years ago (e.g. by not having indexed them).

Google aims at working without thought. But it can only do so for one target audience, and unfortunately for technically minded folk, that target has to be mainstream users. Fortunately, technical folk are usually curious to explore and customize technology.

EDIT just confirmed that it does use added search languages, as expected. e.g. if I add german and french, it provides: "Search English and French and German pages" Note: I'm not doing this for you; but because I'm curious.

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#198

Post by surferbayarea »

joebadmo wrote: post #155
surferbayarea wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do people disagree that social signals can add to relevance? If not, then how does Google get these social signals, if they're locked out of FB and twitter? Let's say fb/twitter release a public api to access the social signals. So things like number of likes on a particular news page. In return, is google willing to release the data on number of clicks on a particular search result for all queries? Seems a bit hyp…

Your comment is very confusing to me. If it's a public API, why would Google have to return anything? And Google's proposition to all web sites everywhere is that in exchange for indexing their content, they provide exposure through the best search engine and the main interface to the web for most people. This is also what FB and Twitter are complaining about: that they aren't receiving proper exposure. It seems like…

search for mark zuckerberg in google. Which is the first social network page that shows up in the search ranking(ranked by google based on publicly available data and its own click-thru data). Why dont they just show that page rather than the google-plus page, whose rank is probably so low it doesn't even show up in the organic search first 10 pages... I'm saying that the kind of click-thru data that google is asking for is private business-critical data. If google expects facebook/twitter to release that, that is akin to google being asked to release the click-data on all query/website combinations which forms the most critical signal in search ranking.

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#199

Post by BiosElement »

jrockway wrote: post #180
amstr wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The disturbing thing is that people here at news.yc -- hopefully a fairly informed bunch -- seemingly aren't able to see past the infuriatingly self-serving nature of a "Don't Be Evil Toolbar" created by "Facebook & Twitter" employees. And, Facebook, which happily used its dominance in social to lock out users from bulk-exporting contacts during the Google+ launch now complains that Google is leveraging its dominance…

I think the problem is that people feel forced into agreeing with Google's decisions when they don't, and people don't like being forced into doing something. As an example, say you won't use Google+ because you don't like their account naming policies. That's fine, don't visit plus.google.com, don't use it, and it doesn't exist to you. But when Plus results start appearing in search, a product that you like, you are…

That's nonsense though. Facebook shows up in search results too. I see where you're going with that, but it's invalid.

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#200

Post by thrilway »

joebadmo wrote: post #148
6ren wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed both (typos and stems), and am impressed with how accurate it is. I miss literal search, and then they removed +keyword - but fortunately, quotes do it now. For example, rip and "rip" give slightly different results, with different emphasis within them: https://www.google.com/search?q=rip https://www.google.com/search?q=%22rip%22 Google's predictive search while you type is amazing, especially because it…

However... artificially ranking their own links, ranking that isn't objective, is deadly to the utility of their search, and to their brand. In the past, google products have seemed to rank highly, but google claimed this was their natural rank. What is the evidence against them now? I think the notion of objectivity in search is a fallacy, and I would hesitate to characterize the addition of social search as artific…

I absolutely agree. There's no objectivity in ranking search results.
Post reply on HN