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Google is FUBAR

extremetech.com

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Re: Google is FUBAR

#151

Post by bambax »

smspence wrote: post #138
bambax wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did you actually read it?

The part I copied here for your viewing convenience is not "speculation" nor "hyperbole" or "opinion", it discusses the best example given so far by Googlers about the benefits of SPYW: that when you know someone who wrote a book about something, and you search about that something, then posts by this person, relevant to your search, pop up!

And this is the best case scenario.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#152

Post by trotsky »

Is it really true that there hasn't been co-mingling of user data between properties already? It seems hard to believe that most user data didn't at least "leak" into their advertising businesses, which presumably is where you'd be worried about it going.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#153

Post by augiehill »

More sensationalist BS by those who would see themselves profit from the fall of the leader. These changes are all about improving relevance of search results and thus improving the user experience!

Re: Google is FUBAR

#154

Post by 5l »

joebadmo wrote: post #121
5l wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody coerced them into any of this. The founders of Google can steer their company in all sorts of directions. If they choose to take their company to a place where they can no longer easily discern 'evil' from 'not evil', then I think it's fair to say that they're not adhering to the spirit of their motto. To be honest, my main concern is that they seem to be driven primarily by commercial considerations in dealin…

I'm not sure where coercion comes into it. I guess my point is that evil isn't always easily discernible, and this is probably most true wrt the most important subjects. They said "Don't be evil," whereas you're interpreting that as "Don't ever come close to doing anything that anyone could ever interpret as evil," which I think is unfair and would be prohibitively restrictive. It's a commercial company, so there wil…

> I'm not sure where coercion comes into it.

Sometimes you find yourself in a moral quandary through no fault of your own.

But if you're going to say, "I wont do evil" (whatever it is that you actually mean by "evil"), it would be wise not to put yourself in a position where you're either forced to do evil, or worse, can't tell if what you're doing is evil or not.

> evil isn't always easily discernible

So you're right; it isn't always discernible, but that's no excuse for making life even more difficult for yourself.

> They said "Don't be evil," whereas you're interpreting that as [...]

Not at all. They explained what they meant by it; I think it's perfectly reasonable and understandable so that's what I will hold them to. Indeed, I think it's clear that's exactly what they wanted us to do.

> I also totally get why Google would want to add social signals: to improve search.

Yes, I understand it too, and as I said elsewhere, I do find it rather convenient. I wont pretend it doesn't improve search, because it does.

That said, I don't want Google locked in a race to the bottom with Facebook to mine our personal data. I don't think it would serve any of us very well in the long term even if it would improve our search results and Google's profits.

> what alternative does Google have?

Find other ways to improve search.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#155

Post by kaffiene »

redthrowaway wrote: post #91
cheald wrote: post #58

What strikes me the most about this whole debacle is that people have complained for ages that Google doesn't "get" social. Its products have been poorly integrated and incongruent. Then, when Google says "Okay, we're going to integrate the balls off of everything, and provide a single consistent experience across all our products", people pitch a fit. It seems they can't win either way. This is a necessary step in f…

> It seems they can't win either way People like to bitch and gossip about whoever's on top. It's why celebrity tabloids exist, it's perversely why shows like Jersey Shore and My Super Sweet 16 exist, it's why people complain about Apple or Google or Microsoft back in the day. Couple the innate tendency towards bitching with the prospect of ad revenue from eyeballs, and you get the kind of tabloidy trash we've seen f…

People complained about Microsoft because they were "on top"????

WTF? Are you for real?

So, stealing competitor's products (Stacker) was fine? Retarding the performance for competitor's products was fine (Lotus 123). Forcing OEMs to bundle DOS then Windows on PCs even if they were going to be used as Linux boxes was fine? Forcing users to use IE was fine? Being a monopoly was fine? Claiming patents over Linux and refusing to name those patents (and thereby extort money from Android phone manufacturers) is fine?

Jesus, that's just off the top of my head without doing any research to remind myself of the shit that Microsoft has done over the years.

Being ignorant of Microsoft's history does not mean that it didn't happen and that some of those people who complain about it actually what they hell they're talking about.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#156

Post by drhowarddrfine »

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…

While Google makes the news on this, everyone loves to forget every marketing firm in the world has been collecting exactly the same data on them since the stone age.

And being able to collect the data about them to serve better results is a business decision. Some may like or dislike it's done that way but it's no different than liking/disliking any product you use now.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#157

Post by chalst »

alexgartrell wrote: post #60
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…

> As far as SPYW goes, it's all about giving the users more relevant results. For the majority of users, Facebook/Twitter results are more relevant than Google Plus results. There's nothing in the rule book that says you can't leverage a successful property to promote another, but it's unfair to everyone to try to pass that off as a move to increase relevance in search results. Disclaimer: I'm a Facebook engineer who…

The first Google response to the Twitter complaint suggested that they would be happy to index FB & T content if only that content were opened up to them in a way that let them do their job properly.

Do we know that Google really wants SPYW to be the walled garden that FB & T claim? Where's the evidence?

Re: Google is FUBAR

#158

Post by icebraining »

aprescott wrote: post #129
Turing_Machine wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the original poster, but it's really annoying to me that Google has changed its default behavior so it returns results that don't necessarily contain all my search terms, often higher on the page than results that do contain all my terms. While this may be helpful to the clueless, I'd love a "yes, I really know what I'm doing" user pref that lets me switch back to the old behavior.

Does this include so-called verbatim search? http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2011/11/search-using-your-t... I don't use it but I'm curious to know if the problems you're encountering also happen with this new feature.

Verbatim is nice, but it'd be extra nice if one could set it as default.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#159

Post by brown9-2 »

cheald wrote: post #58

What strikes me the most about this whole debacle is that people have complained for ages that Google doesn't "get" social. Its products have been poorly integrated and incongruent. Then, when Google says "Okay, we're going to integrate the balls off of everything, and provide a single consistent experience across all our products", people pitch a fit. It seems they can't win either way. This is a necessary step in f…

What strikes me the most about this whole debacle is that people have complained for ages that Google doesn't "get" social. Its products have been poorly integrated and incongruent. Then, when Google says "Okay, we're going to integrate the balls off of everything, and provide a single consistent experience across all our products", people pitch a fit.

That's because there are two entirely different classes of people that are do the bitching:

1) industry "analysts" and commentators claiming that Google doesn't "get" social and will one day lose out because of it

2) actual users of Google disliking the way that Google, in an effort to be "social" (whatever that is) is inserting unhelpful crap into the previously-pristine search results.

Isn't it possible that this diversion into "social" will end up being a big mistake down the road if it fundamentally alters the main Search product? "Social search" seems to be something that prognosticators always claim is right around the corner and is going to change the way we do things, but I don't know a single person that really wants results from their social network in their search results. If we wanted to know what our friends thought about Search Topic X, we would just ask them.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#160

Post by DanBC »

rodion_89 wrote: post #137
DanBC wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Google is great for the general population. You type a bunch of words, and Google will guess what you mean, and will usually return useful results.

I don't want that. I don't mind having to work a bit harder to get results, so long as those results are excellent. So, for your example, I want to have to type an extra word (either programming or snakes or herpatology or whatever) to provide the context that Google would otherwise get from wherever. I understand that most people don't want what I want, which I why I try and avoid the many Google-bashing posts. (I'm not part of that crowd; I don't think Google is evil. Just less useful for me in lots of situations.)

I prefer consistency and repeatability over slowly changing weirdness.

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