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Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#281

Post by l33t7332273 »

lovemenot wrote: post #211
p3rls wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dreamed of building a website like the type I grew up on in the late 90s and early 2000s. The gamefaqs, mrfixitonlines and casterrealms-type websites for me were at the forefront of making this internet medium to be better than books, voice or anything else for that matter for the transmission of information. Fast forward 20 years later. I think I've spent close to 300k on the website and team to help with it. I do…

I see your point and mostly sympathise. It's relevant to the topic and provides a personal perspective. >> ran by non-native English speakers I feel this clause doesn't help promote your grievance. A big promise of the Web was that it was World-Wide. If a site in say Thailand could exceed say a USA site's quality, all the better. I get that your specific competitors didn't excel - except in ranking. But, in principle…

> If a site in say Thailand could exceed say a USA site's quality

For many users, a foundational element of the quality of a website is that is in English; it’s all they speak.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#282

Post by l33t7332273 »

bad_username wrote: post #245
NL807 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm rather shocked how the quality of their search results has tanked over the years. I used to be able to find decent academic content, or programming related topics quite consistently 5 years ago. Now I'm getting only a few vague results either from stackoverflow, math stackexchange, reddit, or apple, and the rest is just utter garbage. Yandex, of all search engines provide consistently better results. Fortunately,…

The Russian search engine pops up in the comments whenever Google search quality is discussed here. I am sure this is non-organic astroturfing.

Comrade, I have personally tried that search engine and found it similar in quality to Bing with just a hint of added excitement from the fear in the back of my mind.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#283

Post by hombre_fatal »

p3rls wrote: post #191
dalbasal wrote: post #121

"Search results plagued with ‘clickbait’ would have been an understatement 20 years ago. The parts of the open web you access from Google/search (most of it) is almost entirely made-for-google' ranking algorithims. The situation is worse than it is on closed social media, including Google's YouTube. Professional YouTubers are also making content for rankings above all, but the fact that it's their own face/voice keep…

I dreamed of building a website like the type I grew up on in the late 90s and early 2000s. The gamefaqs, mrfixitonlines and casterrealms-type websites for me were at the forefront of making this internet medium to be better than books, voice or anything else for that matter for the transmission of information. Fast forward 20 years later. I think I've spent close to 300k on the website and team to help with it. I do…

Here's how that Twitter link describes you and your competitors vs. Kprofiles:

> A few other people have noticed the quiet success of Kprofiles and have already attempted to copy them.

> Some have better content, site structure, and formatting than Kprofiles.

> But they just compete with Kprofile's massive backlink profile.

So did Kprofiles (a somewhat purple website) come before you (Kpopping) or are you talking about competing for second place with Hallyu Idol (a very purple website)?

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#284

Post by gardenhedge »

holoduke wrote: post #171
jorvi wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“site:reddit.com” saves the day, but I feel very uneasy doing so ever since they did their nasty API + demodding ploy.

I always add +forum and end up at conpletely unknown personal websites with sometimes great advice.

Wow, that is a new one for me. Thanks.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#285

Post by jeffbee »

clnq wrote: post #163

It has become quite difficult to find experts on Google. Google is probably catering to the "entertainment" category of reader now more than it was in 2013. This opinion stems from my experience. And my experience is that I'm an old school technical blogger who writes articles certainly not for the "entertainment" crowd, but for the professional crowd. My readership stays high from Monday to Friday and drops to nearl…

> Challenger search engines appear to have gained a significant stake in the tech crowd

I would say they have risen to a detectable but insignificant stake. The founder of Kagi was up here recently saying they have on the order of thousands of active users, after I suggested some objective evidence indicated only hundreds of active users. Kagi is one of the ones with the biggest memeshare on HN, but it still has an active user base of roughly zero.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#286

Post by TerrifiedMouse »

tomjen3 wrote: post #274
TerrifiedMouse wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia doesn't cover everything. > The only sites that are going to be hit by this are those that make money on ads. There are plenty of those and they do provide value - else they won't have been able to survive all these years via ads.

There are plenty of sites, but would you rather follow a link to one of them, or to a personal blog with info about the same thing?

> would you rather follow a link to one of them, or to a personal blog with info about the same thing?

Either one is OK frankly, as long as I get the information I need. Depending on my confidence level in the accuracy of the information on those sites, I might even visit both to compare and contrast.

Regardless, both are unlikely to survive without ads. Most people don't run their own web server to host a blog - most people don't know, and don't want to know, how.

Even if hosting isn't a problem for blogs, I think the amount of blogging will drop.

Who would want spend a week crafting a blog detailing their experiences with something and what they have learned then get next to no views because some AI appropriated their content and stole all your viewers?

With few visitors, probably just search engine and AI crawlers, and no comments on their blog posts ... it's hard not to feel that it's just a wasting time.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#287

Post by srackey »

bad_username wrote: post #245
NL807 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm rather shocked how the quality of their search results has tanked over the years. I used to be able to find decent academic content, or programming related topics quite consistently 5 years ago. Now I'm getting only a few vague results either from stackoverflow, math stackexchange, reddit, or apple, and the rest is just utter garbage. Yandex, of all search engines provide consistently better results. Fortunately,…

The Russian search engine pops up in the comments whenever Google search quality is discussed here. I am sure this is non-organic astroturfing.

Nah he’s right. Yandex is pretty good. Easily on par with Google/Bing. I suspect just no one uses it in America so the results aren’t SEO’d to death.

I’d bet Baidu is decent too but that one really isn’t set up to interface with the Western internet.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#288

Post by zztop44 »

l33t7332273 wrote: post #281
lovemenot wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see your point and mostly sympathise. It's relevant to the topic and provides a personal perspective. >> ran by non-native English speakers I feel this clause doesn't help promote your grievance. A big promise of the Web was that it was World-Wide. If a site in say Thailand could exceed say a USA site's quality, all the better. I get that your specific competitors didn't excel - except in ranking. But, in principle…

> If a site in say Thailand could exceed say a USA site's quality For many users, a foundational element of the quality of a website is that is in English; it’s all they speak.

The site is in English. So it’s just like are you going to judge them for not being native speakers of English and perhaps sometimes making mistakes?

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#289

Post by palata »

toldyouso2022 wrote: post #123
Roark66 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In the desktop search world, google used to respond with large comprehensive articles on subjects that not just answered peoples questions but also educated them on the subject around their question. This was the golden age so to speak IDK, for me it seems the worst plague are the sites that when you search for something like "how to reverse a pushed commit in git" don't give you a single sentence answer you seek, b…

Cookie law is seriously underrated in how much damages it has done. No visible gains for privacy either.

Because every website decides that it is fine to show the annoying popup even though they don't use the data they collect. I wonder if there is a way to give incentives to do it better for the user.

Many websites becomes huge apps for no reason, e-mails abuse HTML and are usually unreadable in plain/text, etc. It's not even clear to me if that makes those websites more successful or if it is just cargo cult ("we have to look modern like the others").

But users mostly don't give a shit and won't support those who e.g. don't track them and therefore don't show the cookie popup.

I don't see a way to solve this, though...

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#290

Post by lowtech8 »

simpaticoder wrote: post #108
Roark66 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think step 2 has been figured out a long time ago: personal not for profit blogs and sites with an rss feed and a "links" section (preferably divided by interests). Such sites still do exist, but usually around various hobbies.

Yeah but we need a name and a recognizable advocacy position. The open web, the indie web, minimalists, even luddites are related terms, but nothing really fits. Then there is the community, the scene - like a webring, but better. Dignified, driven by a simple, solid technical aesthetic, capable, self-sufficient, independent, rational, (classic) liberal, etc. Those are some adjectives I associate with these ideas. I…

How about Real Intelligence web (RW) or Human Web (HW)?
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