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Google is burying the web alive

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Re: Google is burying the web alive

#71

Post by TonyTrapp »

remyp wrote: post #63
TonyTrapp wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When "to google" has literally become a verb in several languages, you know it's not going to be that easy to convince literally hundreds of millions of people to use something different. For many unsavvy people, Google is and continues to be their window into the web, and they wouldn't even know they can have it another way.

People said this about AOL for a long time, too.

Sure, and that also didn't vanish in a day. All I'm saying is that there is a ton of inertia, and people will not be switching to something different in an instant.

Re: Google is burying the web alive

#72

Post by jsjohnst »

remyp wrote: post #63
TonyTrapp wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When "to google" has literally become a verb in several languages, you know it's not going to be that easy to convince literally hundreds of millions of people to use something different. For many unsavvy people, Google is and continues to be their window into the web, and they wouldn't even know they can have it another way.

People said this about AOL for a long time, too.

People (including me) said this for a long time about Yahoo! too. Kinda ironic they both merged and basically died together…

Yawho!?

Re: Google is burying the web alive

#73

Post by CobrastanJorji »

nicbou wrote: post #61
boplicity wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My main mission is to put new information on the internet. It's harder to do this if AI destroys the economics of it. It's also harder without an audience who provides feedback and encouragement. I also run an online website that provides valuable information. However, we have a very different philosophy. The mission is very not not to "put new information on the internet." Rather, it is to provide a valuable and m…

The problem is that there is no audience without a third-party platform nowadays. At least not at a scale. Google was the lesser evil, but I still fully expected to get killed by an algorithm update some day. I vowed to ride this website into the ground if I have to. I believe in its value, even if I need a side job to support it.

There is no "nowadays." There never an era of big Internet audiences without third party platforms. The early web only had small audiences, and the reason it worked was that people were okay with that.

Re: Google is burying the web alive

#74

Post by carlosjobim »

Lazy publishers could have solved this years ago, by making massive syndicates, paid by a single subscription. YouTube did it, and has become a modern wonder of the world.

But no, of course they can't syndicate together with other newspapers or magazines who aren't 100% psychotically equally aligned with them politically.

So they get what's coming to them. They shouldn't have been megalomaniacs, but that's all they are now.

Re: Google is burying the web alive

#75

Post by ninth_ant »

treve wrote: post #28
ninth_ant wrote: post #23

Implicit in this article is the idea that you have to use Google, and that Google Search equals “the web”. I’ll be the boring nerd, I guess, who has to be the one to say there are many other search engines out there. If you don’t like Google (I don’t), or don’t like where they are moving their products (I don’t) — please use a competing search engine. I’ve used DuckDuckGo for years and I don’t miss anything about Goo…

You have control over what you use to search the web, but you don't have control over the incentives of publishers, the content of which google used to get big and monetize and is now cannibalizing.

That’s a fair assessment.

If the intent of the article was to say that Google is creating an environment which incentivizes publishers to lock away content from scrapers, then that’s probably correct in the medium and long term.

But I feel like the market described as being cannibalized here was already in the throes of death thanks to blogspam SEO. For many information categories, in my experience AI results are quite a bit better than the top-ranked results.

And typically for those types of results you want to quickly shuffle off general web search into something more specific like Wikipedia or a site with domain expertise.

Re: Google is burying the web alive

#76

Post by shmerl »

I noticed that Google image reverse search turned into completely unusable garbage that can only produce AI lookalikes but completely fails at finding original images. Literally every time, exact match - zero results.

I guess that's their current trend. Forget about quality search, inject AI everywhere.

Re: Google is burying the web alive

#77

Post by DataDaemon »

Magi604 wrote: post #67

I used to hate the AI overview, but I've slowly been getting used to it and now I will often settle for what the AI gives. It's better than scrolling through loads of links and trying to weed out garbage SEO optimized sites.

Results are OK, until you have this "garbage".

Re: Google is burying the web alive

#79

Post by ajross »

ndiddy wrote: post #69
ajross wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much. This is getting toward a "derangement syndrome" kind of behavior, IMHO. When Microsoft and subsidiaries deploy AI-enhanced search results, it's a "Google Killer" and rockets to the top of the front page of HN to great fanfare. When it turns out that the best and most-used AI-enhanced search results are served at the Google search prompt, Google is "burying the web alive" and the outrage rockets to the fr…

You fell for the Goomba Fallacy https://i.redd.it/33w3fqrnx8pd1.jpeg

Yeah yeah. But nonetheless group think and echo chambers are real things. Not all opinions are uncorrelated data points, probably most of them aren't. And real people (you too) do indeed hold contradictory opinions all the time.

In point of fact insisting that "My Opinion Is Pure And Special and Uncorrelated To Anyone Else's" is probably the single best way to find yourself parroting echo chamber delusions. It's a license to ignore everyone who disagrees with you, because you can always construct things such that they're really arguing with someone else.

I think it's very appropriate to point out when "General consensus on HN as measured by article upvotes" happens to include two grossly contradictory opinions.

Re: Google is burying the web alive

#80

Post by jdgoesmarching »

remyp wrote: post #63
TonyTrapp wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When "to google" has literally become a verb in several languages, you know it's not going to be that easy to convince literally hundreds of millions of people to use something different. For many unsavvy people, Google is and continues to be their window into the web, and they wouldn't even know they can have it another way.

People said this about AOL for a long time, too.

I don’t think AOL ever topped 40 million users while a significant chunk of humanity uses Google. This entire conversation hinges on their unprecedented scale and reach, I don’t think this is an apt comparison.
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