Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The man who killed Google Search?

wheresyoured.at

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 939 posts

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#331

Post by kelseyfrog »

yifanl wrote: post #330
kelseyfrog wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> shouldn't outsiders blame the entire company No, I firmly believe that this level of indirection over-diffuses responsibility in a way that enables the malfeseance we're observing. It's a social dark pattern that I'm keen to identify and disrupt.

I disagree, because this ends up with implying that if you just got rid of That One Fucking Guy, then everything with Google Search would be good. Which... is not a claim I'd agree with without extremely convincing evidence.

Someone can still be responsible for decisions made in a system with poor incentives.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#332

Post by zem »

gregw134 wrote: post #250

Ex-Google search engineer here (2019-2023). I know a lot of the veteran engineers were upset when Ben Gomes got shunted off. Probably the bigger change, from what I've heard, was losing Amit Singhal who led Search until 2016. Amit fought against creeping complexity. There is a semi-famous internal document he wrote where he argued against the other search leads that Google should use less machine-learning, or at leas…

i worked on ranking during singhal's tenure, and it was definitely refreshing to see a "no black box ML ranking" stance.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#333

Post by kelseyfrog »

mrguyorama wrote: post #301
kelseyfrog wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> shouldn't outsiders blame the entire company No, I firmly believe that this level of indirection over-diffuses responsibility in a way that enables the malfeseance we're observing. It's a social dark pattern that I'm keen to identify and disrupt.

You need to do both The company should be held responsible for bad actions AND so should the individuals.

Absolutely true

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#334

Post by recursive »

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #130

While entertaining it doesn't actually say anything about what the villain guy actually did, am I crazy? There's 2 serious charges he levied to google. 1. Ads look more like results. 2. Google results got more useless spam. While 1 is kinda icky it's not that big of a deal, especially since I use an adblocker... and for 2 why does the author think this is the fault of google? Does shittier results increase in more pe…

Using an adblocker for a search engine establishes an adversarial relationship. Why should I have to do that? Why can I not just turn off ads? Of course, we both know the answer to that. Google makes less money then. But this same motivation is affecting everything they do. If Google had their way, they'd put ads in front of your eyeballs even though you don't want it. I'd rather use a search engine that doesn't start from an adversarial position.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#335

Post by TechDebtDevin »

readyplayernull wrote: post #220

> But do you know who has? Sundar Pichai, who previously worked at McKinsey — arguably the most morally abhorrent company that has ever existed, having played roles both in the 2008 financial crisis (where it encouraged banks to load up on debt and flawed mortgage-backed securities) and the ongoing opioid crisis, where it effectively advised Purdue Pharma on how to “growth hack” sales of Oxycontin. That helps explain…

Don't forget their creation of Our failed border security protocols they helped design during the Obama administration. A McKinsey principal once bragged to me about being responsible for "kids in cages"

If half their work wasn't scrubbed from the internet or known publicly at all you'd be able to ctrl + F on their wikipedia page, type CIA and your screen would light up like a Christmas tree.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#336

Post by anal_reactor »

candiodari wrote: post #311
bbor wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) I think it’s important to acknowledge that in many ways Google is actively trying to keep CPC low - what they care most about is total spend. A low CPC means an effective advertising network where interested consumers are efficiently targeted. Their position is complex thanks to their monopoly status over online advertising. B) I don’t think it’s fair to characterize recent layoffs as some put-off collapse… critic…

A) This is short-sighted. What you're suggesting is in fact a way to optimize short-term gain over long-term viability. It's pure MBA tactics. Additionally, it's complete and total oversimplification. If you look at Google's earnings it's pretty damn clear that at least until 2020 they were not just going for maximum total spend, but for a steady, gradual raise in total spend. Not too slow, not too fast. They were NO…

> You can see this in AI. Every story from an AI engineer that ran away from Google is the same. They didn't run away for the money, they ran away because they were getting scared into compliance.

Can you elaborate?

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#337

Post by bbor »

candiodari wrote: post #311
bbor wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) I think it’s important to acknowledge that in many ways Google is actively trying to keep CPC low - what they care most about is total spend. A low CPC means an effective advertising network where interested consumers are efficiently targeted. Their position is complex thanks to their monopoly status over online advertising. B) I don’t think it’s fair to characterize recent layoffs as some put-off collapse… critic…

A) This is short-sighted. What you're suggesting is in fact a way to optimize short-term gain over long-term viability. It's pure MBA tactics. Additionally, it's complete and total oversimplification. If you look at Google's earnings it's pretty damn clear that at least until 2020 they were not just going for maximum total spend, but for a steady, gradual raise in total spend. Not too slow, not too fast. They were NO…

Totally agree on the overall prognosis of Google - I am (also?) one of said engineers! Here’s a recent update from a tiny corner of the company: the rank and file is still incredibly smart and generally well-intentioned, but are following hollow simulacrums of the original culture - all-hands, dogfooding, internal feedback, and ground-up engineering priorities are all maintained in form, but they are now rendered completely functionless. I am personally convinced that the company is — or was, before ChatGPT really took off - focused on immediate short term stock value above all else. After all, if you were looking down the barrel of multiple federal and EU antritrust suits and dwindling public support for the utility you own and operate, you might do the same…

I guess I’m standing up for the simple idea that terribly inefficient organizations can prevail when they’re the incumbents, at least for significant periods if not forever. We can’t be complacent and assume they’ll fall on their own, esp when AGI threatens social calcification on an unheard of scale.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#339

Post by potatolicious »

JohnFen wrote: post #264
gregw134 wrote: post #250

Ex-Google search engineer here (2019-2023). I know a lot of the veteran engineers were upset when Ben Gomes got shunted off. Probably the bigger change, from what I've heard, was losing Amit Singhal who led Search until 2016. Amit fought against creeping complexity. There is a semi-famous internal document he wrote where he argued against the other search leads that Google should use less machine-learning, or at leas…

> where he argued against the other search leads that Google should use less machine-learning This better echoes my personal experience with the decline of Google search than TFA: it seems to be connected to the increasing use of ML in that the more of it Google put in, the worse the results I got were.

It's also a good lesson for the new AI cycle we're in now. Often inserting ML subsystems into your broader system just makes it go from "deterministically but fixably bad" to "mysteriously and unfixably bad".

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#340

Post by davidgerard »

neilv wrote: post #35

I think this article would work better if it were written entirely like textbook traditional investigative journalism. And less like the modern TV opinion personality, or the random strong-opinion Web comments in which many of the rest of us (including myself) indulge.

The problem there is that nobody wrote that article, someone did write this one. You should ask yourself why that is.
Post reply on HN