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The man who killed Google Search?

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Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#821

Post by cbsmith »

barfbagginus wrote: post #635
cbsmith wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the amazing thing is that everyone talks about how Google destroyed search, but fails to acknowledge that nobody with a better search emerged. The amount of money at stake with regards to search is such that the decline of search across the board is far more a reflection of a systemic cause than anything that happened inside any particular company.

Gpt4 driving the Bing tool is a better search engine than Google. First it can critique your objectives and turn them into effective search terms. Second it can filter through spam and avoid displaying it. Third it can reach into the contents of Target pages and actually extract the solution to the problem you're having. These are all things that classic search engines had the opportunity to provide, but declined, in…

Prior to Gpt4 there was PowerSet, which was specifically targeting search. They got bought by Microsoft and then... nothing.

While you can use Gpt4 to do the job, you have to ask yourself why there isn't a search engine just using it.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#822

Post by underlipton »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #347
iamthirsty wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was also way more pessimistic, figuring that they would be having company wide layoffs by 2015 to 2017 but they pushed that out by 5 years. Well in 2011 Google had just over 30k employees, and now they're doing "layoffs" with 180k+ in 2024. I don't think the layoffs mean much.

Did I mention I was more pessimistic? :-) I expect that today they could layoff 150k, keep the 30K that are involved with search and enough ads that are making business and that husk would do okay for a long time. I don't suppose you watched SGI die, that happened to them, kind of spiraled into a core that has some money making business and then lived on that. One of my observations between "early" Google and "late"…

Is IBM a good example? Like GE, their saving-grace restructuring was basically turning into a giant corporate leach (one through financialization, one through consulting).

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#823

Post by eitland »

baryphonic wrote: post #762
raincole wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read the article this thread is about? To summarize it: Google reverted an algorithm that detected SEO spams in 2019. (Note that I never work for Google and I don't know whether it's true or not. It's just what this article says.)

I wasn't responding to the article; I was responding to the claim that Google's results are bad because of all the SEO. It's a claim I've heard from Google apologists including some people I know at Google. I think it's nonsense both for the reasons I stated and for the reasons enumerated in the article.

You are totally correct I think.

This isn't about what is possible.

It is about Google not wanting to say goodbye to the sweet dollars from spammy sites.

Otherwise making the probably number one requested feature, a personal block list, wouldn't have been impossible for a company with so many bright minds.

I mean: little bootstrapped Kagi had it either from the beginning or at least since shortly after they launched.

People always think they lost against SEO spam. But my main reason for quitting as soon as an alternative showed up was because they started to overrule my searches and search for what they thought I wanted to search for.

For a while I kept it at bay by using doublequotes and verbatim but none of those have worked reliably for a decade now.

That isn't SEO spam. That is poor engineering or "we know better than you" attitude.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#824

Post by eitland »

arromatic wrote: post #709
choppaface wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SEO Spam didn't kill search so much as Google failed to retain Matt Cutts or replicate his community involvement https://www.searchenginejournal.com/matt-cutts-resigns-googl...

What did he used to do ? Your comment seems contradictory cutts seem to be on anti spam but your comment implies seo did not kill search . Is seo not part of spam?

Even when matt_cutts used to be here it was still impossible to get him (or anyone else) to care about search results including lots of results I never asked for.

Not low quality pages that spammed high ranking words but pages that simply wasn't related to the query at all as evidenced by the fact that they didn't contain the keywords I searched for at all!

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#825

Post by underlipton »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #738
MattyRad wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also not a Steve Jobs fan, and this reminds me of how Flash died[1]. The Flash Renaissance was the counter-era to the search despair era we currently find ourselves in. In the same vein as Kodak, I wonder what the alternate timeline would look like where Adobe cannibalized native apps. [1] https://youtu.be/65crLKNQR0E?si=mXPgXxlMRxU-xjcu&t=2472

The mistake Adobe made was in canceling Flash instead of open sourcing it. Publish a spec and the let browsers implement the client side, then you can keep selling tools to make animations without everyone having to deal with the bug-riddled proprietary player Adobe clearly had no interest in properly maintaining to begin with. It's kind of astonishing that all these years later we still don't have something equivale…

What makes you think people want easy? /s I mean, clearly that would be best for creativity, for cultural robustness, for accessibility. Unfortunately, there are a lot of incumbents in all the spaces Flash touched who were ecstatic (if in a schadenfreude-esque sense) to see the ladder pulled up after them. When you make it difficult or impossible for the peons to create, you make it difficult or impossible for them to bypass the professionals and the gatekeepers; when they can't tell their stories, their stories get told for them. Again, the professionals and the gatekeepers (and, now, the propagandists) find this ideal.

Suffice it to say, there are a lot of people who worked very hard to make sure that the 1998-2012ish period of openness and open-access and democratization was an anomaly. You got to see a mini-echo of this with the rollout and rollback of pandemic-era accessibility.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#826

Post by bbor »

barfbagginus wrote: post #418
bbor wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 com…

Drop your good intentions - towards Google, that is. Work to sabotage and collapse the organization - do that for the good of humanity. Thank you for your work, and good luck getting out without harm or reprisal Hit em hard.

Very much appreciate the sentiment and kind words! Reminds me of Yudkowsky’s line[1] about AI: “we should be willing to destroy a rogue datacenter by airstrike.” This kind of talk sounds insane in the Silicon Valley language game, but we’re talking about real people’s lives here and sometimes implied violence needs to be made explicit. And that’s what I see your suggestion as, ultimately —- but that’s probably because I got an American HS education, so the Malcom X vs. MLK Jr. debate was driven into my mind quite thoroughly.

[1] https://time.com/6266923/ai-eliezer-yudkowsky-open-letter-no...

Luckily/unluckily I left already due to factors out of my control. Regardless, for all of Google’s faults I will say that they were incredibly serious about data security and respecting consumer data protection laws with strict oversight, so I think “sabotage” in a direct sense would be incredibly hard + risky. The only solution I see is continuing to organize for government regulation. I would include worker organization within Google, but I recently learned they represent less than half a percent of the company…

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#827

Post by fuzzfactor »

robryk wrote: post #405
dekhn wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's too vacuous and based on subjective morals to be realistically followed. I also think we need engineers who do jobs that are ugly to preserve our freedom.

I don't see why subjective morals cannot be realistically followed. Do you mean that it will mean sufficiently different things for different people that they any promise of this shape will not communicate much to strangers, or something else?

>based on subjective morals

Might be more realistic than imposed dogma, you never know.

>I also think we need engineers who do jobs that are ugly to preserve our freedom.

I think so too.

If you build something that can be used for evil purposes, some people along the line are going to have to judge how to build it, or whether or not to build it at all.

This seems like it would always require some moral judgment of some kind.

An engineer who plays an important technical role should not be removed from this type responsibility.

For instance, consider making weapons, some of which might be used offensively, others only defensively.

Some engineers would have no moral qualms against either type, others who are more selective, and others not willing at all. But regardless, coexistence is assured if it is accepted from the outset as an engineering goal.

These are really quite "different things for different people", triggering a different degree of uneasiness as different lines are crossed. All based on a moral foundation, incidentally whose goalposts can be moved whether anyone wants them to or not.

All could be valid depending on the situation, but a creed for the profession can help to better focus outcome, away from the direction of making things worse for humanity because of your efforts.

Experience has shown you really don't want people in key positions without a moral compass to guide their aspirations, and engineering can be important.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#828

Post by freeone3000 »

baryphonic wrote: post #812
freeone3000 wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a large search engine deranks spam websites, the spam websites complain! Loudly! With Google they have a big juicy target with lots of competing ventures for an antitrust case; no such luck for Kagi or DDG.

This is an interesting theory. Is there evidence that it's happening? Is Big SEO unreasonably effective at lobbying the Justice Department?

It’s definitely a concern where I work (not Google). Deranking anybody who happens to share a vertical we’re in is colorable as an anticompetitive action[0], and due to our dominance in another sector (not search), effectively any anticompetitive action anywhere is a no-go. And since we don’t have time to review whether a particular competitor also competes in one of our verticles and run everything by legal, nothing gets de-ranked manually.

0: for context, us doj does not take antitrust action against companies simply for market dominance; it requires market dominance plus an anticompetitive action. However, they don’t like monopolies, so effectively any pretext can be used — see the apple lawsuit or the 90s ms lawsuits for how little it takes.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#829

Post by fuzzfactor »

chasd00 wrote: post #316
akaij wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it was a very good description. The person mentioned is responsible for turning one of the most important pieces of software used by billions, into user-hostile experiences that's better for only a few, including himself, just for profits.

> ..just for profits. well let's be honest, Google was never founded to dig wells or feed starving children. It was only ever for the profits. Also, in their defense, afaik no one's paychecks have ever bounced. I bet many many people would become very interested in profit and its growth if their direct deposit all of a sudden stopped.

Not my downvote. Corrective upvote actually.

>It was only ever for the profits.

Why not? But remember how they had a proven bonanza without having to be the least bit evil?

I know that's not enough for some people, so too bad.

>no one's paychecks have ever bounced.

I guess you could say that. Technically correct.

>their direct deposit all of a sudden stopped.

This appears to be what has actually happened to thousands, and may continue for some time.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#830

Post by Terr_ »

1024core wrote: post #523
jokoon wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

simplicity is always the recipe for success, unfortunately, most engineers are drawn to complexity like moth to fire if they were unable to do some AB testing between a ML search and a non-ML search, they deserve their failure 100% there are not enough engineers blowing the whistle against ML

> most engineers are drawn to complexity like moth to fire Unfortunately, Google evaluates employees by the complexity of their work. "Demonstrates complexity" is a checkbox on promo packets, from what I've heard. Naturally, every engineer will try to over-complicate things just so they can get the raises and promos. You get what you value.

I've heard a similar critique for Google launching new products and then letting them die, where it's really driven by their policies and practice around what gets someone a promotion and what doesn't.
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