Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google
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Re: Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google
#2Its called "the filter bubble" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx525s
Re: Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google
#3>"They make changes to the user interface and collect more data, analyzing what they've got to see what users "liked" more."
I find this so utterly naive that I am incredulous.
Google is a business. They don't tweek results based in favor of user preferences.
They tweek results based on the amount of revenue they are likely to bring in.
It's not an accident that [in the US] http://www.google.com/search?q=weather provides top links to commercial advertizing driven sites for one's local weather and only portals into the main page of weather.gov rather than the local forecast page.
Google search results aren't the best possible for the most people. They are the worst tolerable for maximizing revenue.
[edit] do employees have to use 20% time for downvoting on HN or is it part of their job?
Re: Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google
#4The author is prompt to admit that this is pure speculation on his part, and so we don't know how and why Google became what it is; but I find his explanation very convincing.
Serving personalized results to users may increase click-through rates but it degrades the idea we form of what Google is and what it does.
Re: Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google
#5The author is prompt to admit that this is pure speculation on his part, and so we don't know how and why Google became what it is; but I find his explanation very convincing. Serving personalized results to users may increase click-through rates but it degrades the idea we form of what Google is and what it does.
The problem of course is that what Google actually IS and what people THINK Google is are two completely different things. Google is an ad company, always remember that.
Re: Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google
#6> "They make changes to the user interface and collect more data, analyzing what they've got to see what users "liked" more." I find this so utterly naive that I am incredulous. Google is a business. They don't tweek results based in favor of user preferences. They tweek results based on the amount of revenue they are likely to bring in. It's not an accident that [in the US] http://www.google.com/search?q=weather pro…
Either you didn't read the article or you didn't understand it. The author doesn't complain that Google search results aren't "the best possible for the most people"--au contraire!
He complains they're not the same, that if you search from a given location or being in a given demographic you will get different results than other people, and that this fact erodes the trust users have in Google: how do I know if this set of results is the absolute best on a given topic or if Google is simply showing to me what it "thinks" I will like?
Re: Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google
#7The author is prompt to admit that this is pure speculation on his part, and so we don't know how and why Google became what it is; but I find his explanation very convincing. Serving personalized results to users may increase click-through rates but it degrades the idea we form of what Google is and what it does.
> Serving personalized results to users may increase click-through rates but it degrades the idea we form of what Google is and what it does.
If it serves me better results, then how so?
Re: Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google
#8This is a really good article. Succint, reasonably well written and interesting. That being said, one imagines that Google (despite being an advertising company) have a huge investment in the quality of search.
However, because they are essentially a monopoly, many people try to game the system for their benefit. This creates an arms-race, and may be one of the root causes of this personalisation. I do agree with the main point, that this could potentially make Google less useful for us all as a whole, and will probably lead to their disruption, sooner or later.
Re: Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google
#9The author is prompt to admit that this is pure speculation on his part, and so we don't know how and why Google became what it is; but I find his explanation very convincing. Serving personalized results to users may increase click-through rates but it degrades the idea we form of what Google is and what it does.
The problem of course is that what Google actually IS and what people THINK Google is are two completely different things. Google is an ad company, always remember that.
The argument that "it's a business" is weak and not very helpful.
Google makes its money from advertising, but in order for it to place ads it needs to serve relevant results; serving "tailored" results because they generate more clicks is short-sighted (well, that's the argument anyway). If people become so distrustful of Google that they stop using it, and use a combination of DDG or Wolfram Alpha for example, then there will be no more ads for Google to serve.
We're admittedly very far from this, but the fact that high-profile people such as PG start to complain about it publicly (and not just old anonymous grumps like me) should make Google think.
We'll see.
Re: Paul Graham, the Commons, and How Google Stopped Being Google
#10The author is prompt to admit that this is pure speculation on his part, and so we don't know how and why Google became what it is; but I find his explanation very convincing. Serving personalized results to users may increase click-through rates but it degrades the idea we form of what Google is and what it does.
> Serving personalized results to users may increase click-through rates but it degrades the idea we form of what Google is and what it does. If it serves me better results, then how so?
Better can mean 'more liked' and 'more accurate' which are not necessarily equivalent. Accuracy being something of a fuzzy category, of course.