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Google is FUBAR

extremetech.com

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Re: Google is FUBAR

#131

Post by daedalus_j »

georgieporgie wrote: post #100
Ihadtocomment wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, your post is wrong on so many levels. So for users Google+ is most relevant in social? Not even one link from Facebook or Twitter? Just like Google Local is best for the users when showing 100% Google links. Please do not insult people's intelligence. Google is doing this for a few reasons and plastering more ads is the main one. With Google+ a lote users get to stay on Google+ due to placement not go to our sit…

Downvoted for being truculent and inflammatory, and not much else.

Upvoted for "truculent".

Re: Google is FUBAR

#132

Post by smspence »

drhayes9 wrote: post #128
smspence wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are scared of is some hypothetical situation that there so-far is no evidence it could or would happen in the future? When you do web searches, your personal emails start popping up within the results? That actually happens, or is going to happen? When?

Relevant ads outed a gay teen on Facebook: http://unicornbooty.com/blog/2012/01/11/gay-teen-inadvertent... Maybe not widespread, but definitely not entirely hypothetical.

I'm not sure what this has to do with my question. What you linked to has nothing to do with either Google or email.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#133

Post by zmj »

DanBC wrote: post #111
freehunter wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Can I have an independent "authoritative" search engine and "cool" social networking tool. Yes, you can. But Google wants to make search better. There's no denying it's gotten worse as time goes on (and SEO gets better). The only thing to do next is to understand what you're looking for by understanding you. "I don't want relevant search results, I just want relevant search results!" This is the problem Google faces…

But I don't want relevant search results. I want accurate search results. I hate being limited by the bubble; I hate having to cut away rubbish related to what a search engine thinks I want.

There is no such thing as an objectively "accurate" search result. It's all relative to the question in your head.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#134

Post by cpt1138 »

cletus wrote: post #50

Disclaimer: I am a Google engineer. These opinions are my own. Nothing I say in any way represents the company's position, officially or unofficially. That being said, I see all this as much ado about nothing. Privacy policies are complex beasts governed by many regulatory environments. Reducing a huge number of these policies to a handful, announcing it ahead of time and giving you controls over privacy all seem lik…

I love the arrogance of "it's all about giving the users more relevant results." Its not about that at all, its all about the maximization of advertising which is totally different. I'm not the typical user, I have divorced myself from all Google products, and use adblocker and ghostery to prevent trackers. Before doing all this, since I'm interested in bicycles and talk about bicycles, Google would push the same bicycle ad in my face on every site I visited. I made a mental note never to purchase anything from that site. This is nothing but evil masked as "were doing this for the user."

Re: Google is FUBAR

#136

Post by Steko »

cletus wrote: post #50

Disclaimer: I am a Google engineer. These opinions are my own. Nothing I say in any way represents the company's position, officially or unofficially. That being said, I see all this as much ado about nothing. Privacy policies are complex beasts governed by many regulatory environments. Reducing a huge number of these policies to a handful, announcing it ahead of time and giving you controls over privacy all seem lik…

"EDIT: as far as including Twitter/FB goes, Eric Schmidt addressed this"

Not to the satisfaction of many people. I don't need FB or Twitter or G+ results but it seems clear to me that:

(1) if subject X is more active by far on network Y, then even partial results results including network Y are better (read: "more relevant") then results only showing network Z.

(2) Most subjects are more active by far on Twitter or FB then they are on G+.

(3) Results only showing G+ therefore are inferior to more inclusive but partial results from FB/Twitter.

LONG EDIT:

I guess even given the above we'd have to consider whether results that only include network Z are better then results that include no network.

Google's case apparently is that it does, and that, while better worlds may exist where FB and Twitter sign deals, what Google delivers today is better for the user then what it delivered a few weeks ago.

The skeptical counterargument is that this just amounts to favorable placement for Google's product. Imagine if Google launched a Flickr clone tomorrow with very few users and suddenly on GIS's a quarter of the top results were reserved for Google's Flickr clone. Why bother earning a higher page rank the right way when you can just host your images with Google's services and get a free SERP boost? That is exactly what Danny Sullivan talked about although he used video for his example.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#137

Post by rodion_89 »

DanBC wrote: post #111
freehunter wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Can I have an independent "authoritative" search engine and "cool" social networking tool. Yes, you can. But Google wants to make search better. There's no denying it's gotten worse as time goes on (and SEO gets better). The only thing to do next is to understand what you're looking for by understanding you. "I don't want relevant search results, I just want relevant search results!" This is the problem Google faces…

But I don't want relevant search results. I want accurate search results. I hate being limited by the bubble; I hate having to cut away rubbish related to what a search engine thinks I want.

How are 'relevant' and 'accurate' different in this case? (serious question)

For example if I search for "python books" I get results about books teaching the programming language. I'm a programmer and this makes sense in that it is both 'relevant' and 'accurate'.

If my girlfriend does the same search she gets books about snakes. She is a biologist so it is again both 'accurate' and 'relevant'.

The problem arrises if she gets results about programming because she does not know or care about it. It is technically 'accurate' but now the product is useless to her.

Look at the Wikipedia article for "python". There are too many uses for the word.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python

Re: Google is FUBAR

#138

Post by smspence »

bambax wrote: post #120
smspence wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Google is playing with fire... If they break search, they will die." Please explain how they might "break search". I keep seeing comments on HN about how Google is messing up search, and also G+ is ruining peoples' lives somehow. I have seen Google do absolutely nothing that you can't opt out of, or just plain ignore. For example, I technically have a G+ account, but I never ever click on G+ and I never actually see…

This article by Farhad Manjoo from Slate says better than I could why SPYW is silly and bad: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/01/... The best part: Yet even the examples that Google employees have been showing off don’t seem very useful to me. On his blog, Matt Cutts, who heads Google’s Webspam team, points out how his query for general tso’s chicken is improved by social links. He follows Jen…

Instead of answering my questions, you have just copy-pasted more speculation and hyperbole from an opinion piece written by just another blogger. What I am trying to do here is get people to actually think logically about these things, not just take everything they hear from the tech-blog echo chamber and accept it as fact.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#140

Post by HPBEggo »

bambax wrote: post #123
cletus wrote: post #50

Disclaimer: I am a Google engineer. These opinions are my own. Nothing I say in any way represents the company's position, officially or unofficially. That being said, I see all this as much ado about nothing. Privacy policies are complex beasts governed by many regulatory environments. Reducing a huge number of these policies to a handful, announcing it ahead of time and giving you controls over privacy all seem lik…

> If we know something of your interests (based on G+ and/or search), isn't suggesting more relevant content to you on Youtube (as a purely hypothetical example) a good thing? No, it's not. Not because of "privacy" concerns or this whole silly "evil" debate, but because YOU'LL GUESS WRONG. I have many interests. I never email anyone about my search queries because I do searches about programming, and I exchange mail…

This.

Considering the vastly different uses people put different portions of Google's services towards, combining all of them seems rather counter-productive to me.

I suppose an option to partition different services into different relevancy 'portfolios' would solve the problem, but that puts a lot of burden on the user that, at least in my opinion, most users are not looking for.

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