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Become Ungoogleable

joeyh.name

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Re: Become Ungoogleable

#51

Post by greiskul »

fooyc wrote: post #41
ghaff wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Killing RSS was part of that strategy. Oh please. I get that it's more satisfying to blame Google than the faceless masses who had zero interest in RSS and who had a variety of alternatives to Reader in any case. I guess they also had a strategy to kill social media by axing Google+ and user-created encyclopedias by killing Knol.

Not only Reader, but also the RSS support in Chrome and Firefox (whose Google used to be the primary source of funds). And Feedburner.

> Firefox (whose Google used to be the primary source of funds)

Google deal with Firefox was always about being the default search engine there, and that's it. They never had any power of cutting it adding features to the project.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#52

Post by Crontab »

Joey Hess. The first time I heard his name, it was an article for Linux Journal, which was about managing your home directory in CVS. He went up to create Git-Annex, which I understand works well.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#53

Post by distortedsignal »

deltarholamda wrote: post #33
Aurornis wrote: post #8

> Nobody really expects to be able to find anything of value in a Google search now This is a categorically false premise. The kind of statement that only makes sense when you're in a deep bubble and entirely removed from the average person's use of the internet. Deliberately removing yourself from Google is fine for the author who is more concerned about taking an ideological stance than they are about being discove…

>This is a categorically false premise This is accurate, somewhat. A lot of people do expect to find things of value when the use Google to search. But people who are more technical know it's a bit of a faff and bother to get Google to spit out what you're actually looking for, outside of "who is Chloe Grace Moretz" or something equally banal. And Google-the-Company does treat the Internet like it is their corporate…

I'm not sure that I agree.

My brother tried to set me up with a girl last week. She has a pretty uncommon name. Googled her. Found... a lot of stuff.

I have a VERY common name. Think multiple (relatively) famous people (photographers, US Medal of Honor winner, enough lawyers to choke a court system for DECADES), but if you google my name and the city I live in (1,000,000+ people), my LinkedIn is like the second result.

For everyone saying that Google has gotten worse over the time they've been using it, these two use cases (which are pretty challenging) do really still work.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#54

Post by scrum-treats »

codetrotter wrote: post #21
Aurornis wrote: post #8

> Nobody really expects to be able to find anything of value in a Google search now This is a categorically false premise. The kind of statement that only makes sense when you're in a deep bubble and entirely removed from the average person's use of the internet. Deliberately removing yourself from Google is fine for the author who is more concerned about taking an ideological stance than they are about being discove…

If everyone on HN stopped using Google and started using DuckDuckGo. And we told all our friends and family to do the same. Would it have an impact?

Kinda...

DuckDuckGo allows for supplement of Google Search, as does Brave, and other search engines. Google freaked out after the ChatGPT release (rightly so) and padded their hand a bit.

Impact would probably be Ads via Google Search Engine. Which, great, because Google Ads-generated results remain a huge vulnerability in terms of active phishing attacks. Maybe it's gotten better in the last month, however I don't really use Google Search anymore, to avoid phishing attacks.

And, this is one reason why I like Brave, because I can control what content cannot appear in my search results, to better mitigate phishing attacks.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#55

Post by scrum-treats »

dewey wrote: post #29
codetrotter wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everyone on HN stopped using Google and started using DuckDuckGo. And we told all our friends and family to do the same. Would it have an impact?

Not even on HN people are united in preferring Google. Personally I tried to switch many times and always made my way back, and I'm not even really in the Google ecosystem unlike others.

Google Search was awesome until it was ruined by Ads. Such a shame. There's dorking, however Google is actively de-indexing content, so much so that it makes you wonder what (monetary) motivation Google is serving with Search because it's not "information for all" anymore. The term "sell out" comes to mind, which sucks when you think about how cool Google was (i.e., the best and brightest doing the most so you could also do the most).

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#56

Post by scrum-treats »

fooyc wrote: post #41
ghaff wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Killing RSS was part of that strategy. Oh please. I get that it's more satisfying to blame Google than the faceless masses who had zero interest in RSS and who had a variety of alternatives to Reader in any case. I guess they also had a strategy to kill social media by axing Google+ and user-created encyclopedias by killing Knol.

Not only Reader, but also the RSS support in Chrome and Firefox (whose Google used to be the primary source of funds). And Feedburner.

Note: Brave (Chromium) has a RSS support. It's pretty good.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#57

Post by tagyro »

This is the way!

I thought about this the past couple of weeks: I get less than 10% of the visits to my website(s) from google [measured via Plausible].

I want to block google(bot) from visiting my website and I'm seriously considering adding a "Usage Policy" that specifically prohibits any crawler from visiting my site(s).

Admittedly, I couldn't care less about the traffic, others might.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#58

Post by WirelessGigabit »

distortedsignal wrote: post #53
deltarholamda wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is a categorically false premise This is accurate, somewhat. A lot of people do expect to find things of value when the use Google to search. But people who are more technical know it's a bit of a faff and bother to get Google to spit out what you're actually looking for, outside of "who is Chloe Grace Moretz" or something equally banal. And Google-the-Company does treat the Internet like it is their corporate…

I'm not sure that I agree. My brother tried to set me up with a girl last week. She has a pretty uncommon name. Googled her. Found... a lot of stuff. I have a VERY common name. Think multiple (relatively) famous people (photographers, US Medal of Honor winner, enough lawyers to choke a court system for DECADES), but if you google my name and the city I live in (1,000,000+ people), my LinkedIn is like the second resul…

And did you Google yourself on a clean computer?

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#59

Post by mrguyorama »

scrum-treats wrote: post #55
dewey wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even on HN people are united in preferring Google. Personally I tried to switch many times and always made my way back, and I'm not even really in the Google ecosystem unlike others.

Google Search was awesome until it was ruined by Ads. Such a shame. There's dorking, however Google is actively de-indexing content, so much so that it makes you wonder what (monetary) motivation Google is serving with Search because it's not "information for all" anymore. The term "sell out" comes to mind, which sucks when you think about how cool Google was (i.e., the best and brightest doing the most so you could…

>because it's not "information for all" anymore.

Anyone who has thought google was doing anything good after they bought doubleclick is living in fantasy land. They pretty much immediately started playing advertising extortion games and they optimize for more viewed google ads with things like AMP and making ads harder to notice. Google stopped caring about "information for all" the second after they made their original research paper and realized they had a significant competitive advantage to make some money with.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#60

Post by mrguyorama »

greiskul wrote: post #51
fooyc wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only Reader, but also the RSS support in Chrome and Firefox (whose Google used to be the primary source of funds). And Feedburner.

> Firefox (whose Google used to be the primary source of funds) Google deal with Firefox was always about being the default search engine there, and that's it. They never had any power of cutting it adding features to the project.

Officially, sure, but you shouldn't pretend that Google's funding isn't the main survival line for Mozilla as an entity, and that there isn't pressure there.
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