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Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

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Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#171

Post by kortilla »

cyanmagenta wrote: post #75
raincole wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal age of drinking is arbitrary and people accept it. Hell, even legal age of consent is arbitrary (please don't argue this -- if it's not it won't vary across developed countries). The absolute majority of legal lines we drew are arbitrary.

I think it’d be more accurate to say “imprecise” rather than “arbitrary.” For example, the legal drinking age is set to 21 (or whatever) based on politicians’ estimation of when most people are mature enough to handle the consequences. It’s true that there is no way to exactly specify a perfect age limit, but that doesn’t mean the limit was set randomly without any reason or basis, i.e., arbitrarily. Sorry if I’m bei…

> estimation of when most people are mature enough to handle the consequences.

This is bullshit. 18 is when consequences start, because that’s when you’re treated as an adult by the legal system.

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#172

Post by MadnessASAP »

bruce511 wrote: post #113
jdewerd wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The complaint was about Google's "talk to the hand" onboarding/feedback process, not the preferences of advertisers.

Sure, I think we can agree that at Google scale the business interactions with me as a potential supplier are automated and soulless. On the other hand there are several large supermarket chains where I live, and while I have a small artisinal cheese making hobby, so far my interactions with any of them to put it on their shelves have been equally soulless. Perhaps in this context the issue is not monopoly, but rathe…

I cannot tell you how much I despise this idea that a company can be too big to talk to their customers/partners/products.

If your relationship to a company is so worthless that they can't spend 5 minutes of an employee's day talking to you, then what value could they possibly be providing you?

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#173

Post by bmacho »

navane wrote: post #166

On one hand I totally agree with the Luddite. On the other hand, why do we need Google for recipes. Everyone eats multiple times per day. You only need to host text, really. How come the world hasn't come together to create this. How can the world ever come together if we can't even create this.

Yeah, I don't get it. How else would you find recipes? Especially the random and rare ones. Especially if there is an incentive for people to make you find their stuff, and not the random and rare ones.

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#174

Post by ant6n »

IshKebab wrote: post #168
navane wrote: post #166

On one hand I totally agree with the Luddite. On the other hand, why do we need Google for recipes. Everyone eats multiple times per day. You only need to host text, really. How come the world hasn't come together to create this. How can the world ever come together if we can't even create this.

I don't really get why people have problems using Google for recipes anyway. Just search for recipes on BBC good food. They have recipes for everything, lots of ratings from real people; the highly rated recipes are really good. Here's an example: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/strawberry-cheesecake-4-... I've literally never needed another recipe site.

We need search engines because not everyone knows every good website for every possible context.

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#175

Post by noobermin »

rustcleaner wrote: post #16

Maybe it's time for a market cap maximum. If your market cap exceeds the median GDP of all African countries, you get broken up. No more borg controlling the internet. This should help prevent vertical consolidation. Truly corporate death penalty any children of breakups who collude (full loss to equity, half loss to creditors, assets auction to public). Google shouldn't exist at its scale, nor should Apple, Microsof…

So, I'm generally aware how monopolies form but given I'm not a web developer, what are the difficulties in starting a competing ad revenue company in the world today beyond the typical difficulties facing starting companies/startups?

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#176

Post by [deleted] »

zrobotics wrote: post #167
samdung wrote: post #165

The internet is an SEO landfill ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20256764 ) This is a related discussion from about 5 years ago about how SEO is ruining search. Google still seems to have a thick enough skin and a monopoly to get away with crap even after so many years of ruining search.

Calling it a Landfill seems accurate. I just searched (on DDG) for the tap size for a 5/16-24 bolt. I got garbage like this: https://shuntool.com/article/what-size-drill-os-used-for-a-5... This isn't even the worst example, since it does at least have the correct info buried amongst tons of Ai generated garbage, but I can't use this for reference, since it tells me 4 different drill sizes. I've had to switch back to…

[deleted]

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#178

Post by [deleted] »

behringer wrote: post #41
zulban wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you set an arbitrary cap like "GDP of all African countries" lots of people will argue it's too high, or too low, and you won't have any argument to make because it's arbitrary. Your solution sounds great but in practice it's simplistic.

The solution is much simpler than all that. Just make the idea of the public corporation illegal.

[deleted]

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#179

Post by Scarblac »

vitus wrote: post #127
rustcleaner wrote: post #16

Maybe it's time for a market cap maximum. If your market cap exceeds the median GDP of all African countries, you get broken up. No more borg controlling the internet. This should help prevent vertical consolidation. Truly corporate death penalty any children of breakups who collude (full loss to equity, half loss to creditors, assets auction to public). Google shouldn't exist at its scale, nor should Apple, Microsof…

> If your market cap exceeds the median GDP of all African countries What does this mean? In terms of GDP, the median African country is Benin, with a GDP of about $20 billion. Maybe you want mean instead. The average GDP across the 51 countries in Africa is $56 billion. Do you think that, um, Chipotle with its market cap of $88 billion should be broken up? What about Costco? Its market cap is over $300 billion, and…

I assume he picked some ridiculously high number as a starting point.

In the end the problem is capitalism, the idea that investors (people merely looking to turn money into more money) should be considered the only owners of companies.

That forces this eternal growth model on us that enshittifies everything.

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#180

Post by matsemann »

noobermin wrote: post #175
rustcleaner wrote: post #16

Maybe it's time for a market cap maximum. If your market cap exceeds the median GDP of all African countries, you get broken up. No more borg controlling the internet. This should help prevent vertical consolidation. Truly corporate death penalty any children of breakups who collude (full loss to equity, half loss to creditors, assets auction to public). Google shouldn't exist at its scale, nor should Apple, Microsof…

So, I'm generally aware how monopolies form but given I'm not a web developer, what are the difficulties in starting a competing ad revenue company in the world today beyond the typical difficulties facing starting companies/startups?

If what you make is an ad platform, you have the normal chicken egg problem that without your ad network existing on many pages, no one wants to buy ads from you, and opposite way that without lots of ad buyers no one wants to reserve room for your ad network on their site.

But that's a normal startup problem. What makes it impossibility to beat google is that they control so many other parts:

- they know everything about the visitor. What they've searched for on google, which videoes they watch on YouTube, which websites you visit through their ads or browser, where you normally shop through Maps, who you keep in contact with through Gmail, which apps you use on your Android. Etc. Etc. There is no way you can place more relevant ads than them.

Secondly, if someone were ti to switch from AdSense to your startup, they might suddenly find themselves with their traffic having tanked. Why would google search send them to their site, when they can send the visitor to a site where google also makes money..

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