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Become Ungoogleable

joeyh.name

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Re: Become Ungoogleable

#201

Post by deltarholamda »

twelve40 wrote: post #161
deltarholamda wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>mainstream tech press sites That's kind of the point. Old Google unearthed things. New Google is where you go to find out what the media (and Google) wants you to know. If that's what you want, then sure, Google is great. I used "best gaming laptop" as an example, but you can try "what is the best mayonnaise" if you'd like. My results included Uproxx. Which I guess counts as "unearthing," since I would never go to a…

if people link to Tom's hardware for new laptops (i dont, but maybe it's popular), is that bad? and a sign of googles demise? what would you like to see instead of those results that made you so unhappy? what else should have been unearthed? switching topics from your own initial example is not helpful.

People are focusing on the one example I gave off the top of my head. I have never actually searched for "best gaming laptop," because I don't really play games. It is an example of a type of query that, at one time, gave different sorts of answers when compared to today.

If you can't extrapolate the larger point from that, I don't know what to tell you.

But you are suggesting with "if people link to Tom's hardware" that PageRank is still in play. As far as I know, it isn't anymore. There may be something similar or related to PageRank in the black box Google unhelpfully calls "the algorithm," but it's not counting up the number of links and showing that. Google dropped and/or altered that fairly quickly after people learned to game it.

Perhaps you have never had to alter, tweak, or otherwise fold, spindle and mutilate your search queries in order to get Google to find what you're looking for instead of what seems to be clickfarming nonsense. If so, I'm impressed. I would also say that you are pretty unique, as bashing Google to get it to spit out something useful seems to be more and more difficult these days.

I believe Google is aware of this problem. It's why they're jumping into AI like everybody else. They have reached the end of what they can contort the algorithm into doing, so they are going to replace at least some of their search with AI generated answers.

I have no idea why people are so eager to defend Google either. They are a privacy nightmare, they run roughshod over Internet standards, and they throw their considerable weight around like a bully. It's very weird.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#202

Post by dizhn »

oAlbe wrote: post #127
bachmeier wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I mean no harm by this comment, but I think you're the one living in a bubble. Do you watch high school students using the internet? Where do they go for information? Reddit is the first place they look. Then they look for a Discord serve…

> Then they look for a Discord server. How? Are there ways to search for discord servers that might have content you want inside of them? Like, directories of discord servers? I'm genuinely curious because that would be very useful.

On matrix I search for rooms all the time. I guess discord doesn't have this since they have the concept of an invite url to go to a server.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#203

Post by pickingdinner »

wolverine876 wrote: post #173
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…

> categorically false What does categorically false mean?

False category. Like saying an apple is a vegetable. Categorically false.

Here, the category of "no one" is incorrect. Correct category may be, as per the comment, "those taking an ideological stance."

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#204

Post by pSYoniK »

I'm not sure why people are asking for search queries and posting search reaults. These are either way filtered by the profile determined for you as a "category" or cohort of users.

So saying that Google is useful for a generic search like "the best gaming laptop" is a bit wrong. The issue starts when the response to this begins with "scrlling past the ads and sponsored content" to "SEO optimized but not necessarily useful content".

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#205

Post by minimaul »

superkuh wrote: post #2

It's a fine idea. But what I'm taking away from this post is the link to the Google/Chromium web DRM prototype and summary ... yikes. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environ... >- The web page executing in a user's web browser >- A third party that can “attest” to the device a web browser is executing on, referred to as the attester >- The web developers server which can remotely verify attestati…

I consider it an utterly disgusting premise, that will:

- make OSS systems second class systems online

- make older devices second class systems online

- prevent people from modifying devices they own (as it'll break the chain of trust and therefore the attestation)

- prevent people from modifying software (custom builds of Chrome, Firefox, etc won't be signed and therefore break the chain of trust and therefore the attestation)

- prevent people from running browser plugins that do things browser authors don't approve of

But hey, from google's PoV, it's a giant win, they can:

- make it harder for anyone else to crawl the web, and therefore compete with google

- make it harder for people to not watch ads, preserving google's revenue streams

- make it harder for anyone to automate the web in ways they or other browser vendors don't like

The 'holdback' mechanism is a joke and I imagine would disappear after a year or two.

Feels like a really good reminder of why it's a terrible idea for google to both be in control of really large important web properties like google search, youtube, maps, ads, but also the single most popular browser.

edit: I hope Apple and MS push back, as they're both vendors with significant marketshare (Mozilla too, but they're smaller). At least if Apple didn't do it, it'd be hard to rely on in US/UK.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#206

Post by sciyoshi »

pickingdinner wrote: post #203
wolverine876 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> categorically false What does categorically false mean?

False category. Like saying an apple is a vegetable. Categorically false. Here, the category of "no one" is incorrect. Correct category may be, as per the comment, "those taking an ideological stance."

Because I was curious about this: the use of "categorically" in the phrase "categorically false" doesn't directly relate to the concept of "categories" as groups or classes of things. Turns out it's actually related to the philosophical use of the term which originated with Aristotle and was further developed by Kant (see "categorical imperative" on Wikipedia).

"categorically" in this situation is used to emphasize the absolute, unambiguous, and unconditional nature of the falseness.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#207

Post by snyda »

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…

[flagged]

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#208

Post by jki275 »

bachmeier wrote: post #105
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. 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. I mean no harm by this comment, but I think you're the one living in a bubble. Do you watch high school students using the internet? Where do they go for information? Reddit is the first place they look. Then they look for a Discord serve…

high school students type whatever they're looking for into a web browser, which automatically searches Google for it.

They're not typing "google.com" into anything, but they're using it all the same.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#209

Post by twelve40 »

deltarholamda wrote: post #201
twelve40 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if people link to Tom's hardware for new laptops (i dont, but maybe it's popular), is that bad? and a sign of googles demise? what would you like to see instead of those results that made you so unhappy? what else should have been unearthed? switching topics from your own initial example is not helpful.

People are focusing on the one example I gave off the top of my head. I have never actually searched for "best gaming laptop," because I don't really play games. It is an example of a type of query that, at one time, gave different sorts of answers when compared to today. If you can't extrapolate the larger point from that, I don't know what to tell you. But you are suggesting with "if people link to Tom's hardware"…

thank you for a thorough reply, but extrapolating from anecdotal hypothetical search that wasn't even tried seems pretty comical. My counter-anecdote (which I've actually tried) is that Google works for most of my searches. I have no love or affiliation with them, so without anything more than anecdotes there's is not much to pontificate about, so I'm pretty amazed these walls of text about googles demise (purely based on "feelings") pop up every time.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#210

Post by RGamma »

evanchisholm wrote: post #172
bachmeier wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I mean no harm by this comment, but I think you're the one living in a bubble. Do you watch high school students using the internet? Where do they go for information? Reddit is the first place they look. Then they look for a Discord serve…

This is so untrue. Most high schoolers run a Google search for their queries first. Most of the time just looking for a Wikipedia page. Occasionally smart ones will Google and append "reddit" to the end of their search when looking for opinions but a lot of highschoolers barely know what reddit is. YouTube would probably be next up and then maybe TikTok. But Google is still 100% the first place to go. Source: I'm a h…

Out of curiosity: How did you find HN?
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