Google is FUBAR • Hacker News Board

Re: Google is FUBAR

#121

Post by joebadmo » Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 7:42 PM UTC

5l wrote: post #115

joebadmo wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, things like privacy policies and appropriate use of personal information aren't as straightforward, even for children. "Theoretically, there's no difference between theory and practice," right? Also, if you think the concept of evil is easy or straightforward, well, let's just say I'm a proponent of a broad liberal arts education.

Nobody coerced them into any of this. The founders of Google can steer their company in all sorts of directions. If they choose to take their company to a place where they can no longer easily discern 'evil' from 'not evil', then I think it's fair to say that they're not adhering to the spirit of their motto. To be honest, my main concern is that they seem to be driven primarily by commercial considerations in dealin…

I'm not sure where coercion comes into it. I guess my point is that evil isn't always easily discernible, and this is probably most true wrt the most important subjects.

They said "Don't be evil," whereas you're interpreting that as "Don't ever come close to doing anything that anyone could ever interpret as evil," which I think is unfair and would be prohibitively restrictive.

It's a commercial company, so there will always be commercial considerations. And I do understand the general unease around Google. But I also totally get why Google would want to add social signals: to improve search. And if FB won't open up, what alternative does Google have?

Re: Google is FUBAR

#122

Post by yaix » Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 7:44 PM UTC

"It must force [...] Google+ down the throats of users who are simply looking for a brilliant search engine."

And that's the part I don't get. Facebook does not even make that much money. Why would Google want to be more like it?

Google is leading the part of the web with most profits. And now tries hard to abandon it in favor of becoming second in the part that makes one of the worst profits. Why?

Re: Google is FUBAR

#123

Post by bambax » Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 7:44 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #50

Disclaimer: I am a Google engineer. These opinions are my own. Nothing I say in any way represents the company's position, officially or unofficially. That being said, I see all this as much ado about nothing. Privacy policies are complex beasts governed by many regulatory environments. Reducing a huge number of these policies to a handful, announcing it ahead of time and giving you controls over privacy all seem lik…

> If we know something of your interests (based on G+ and/or search), isn't suggesting more relevant content to you on Youtube (as a purely hypothetical example) a good thing?

No, it's not. Not because of "privacy" concerns or this whole silly "evil" debate, but because YOU'LL GUESS WRONG.

I have many interests.

I never email anyone about my search queries because I do searches about programming, and I exchange mail with my friends about past or future parties. If you try to use one to help the other you will produce a soup of irrelevant garbage.

Please just show me the most relevant links in the whole Web. I don't care what my friends think (I know already).

Re: Google is FUBAR

#124

Post by bambax » Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 7:47 PM UTC

cheald wrote: post #58

What strikes me the most about this whole debacle is that people have complained for ages that Google doesn't "get" social. Its products have been poorly integrated and incongruent. Then, when Google says "Okay, we're going to integrate the balls off of everything, and provide a single consistent experience across all our products", people pitch a fit. It seems they can't win either way. This is a necessary step in f…

> people have complained for ages that Google doesn't "get" social

Who exactly "complained"? Google didn't get social, and it was fine. Now they still don't, but they've decided to try anyway. It's like an awkward teenager who thinks they can dance. It's embarrassing.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#125

Post by cbr » Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 7:47 PM UTC

fred_nada wrote: post #114

smspence wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you give a specific example of a search that you've done on Google that gives you bad results? And that would give you better "unbiased" results on DuckDuckGo? I would like to try and do a side-by-side comparison. Also, what do you mean by "unbiased"? What is the "bias" that Google has? I am trying to find real, concrete examples of all of the complaints in this thead, and I can't really find any.

search nfc championship game in google. In my results MG Seigler's g+ account is ranked #5. Above the nfl, nytimes, espn, etc. It is a G+ post where he says "going to the nfc championship game with Sarah Lacy" - Keep in mind, I am not friends with him nor is he in my circles, etc. So instead of getting an article from a sports news outlet about the post I get a MG Seigler status update. http://duckduckgo.com/?q=nfc+c…

Weird; I don't get any g+ accounts on the front page, either normally or in an incognito window.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#126

Post by bambax » Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 7:55 PM UTC

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #40

Although I don't like the way Google is starting to control too much online, I believe that using the social network and other information to influence search and other services is the future. Google’s move towards social search could be the most significant change in the way we use the web since the beginning of Google itself. Consider that with this move, Google is actually moving away from their flagship Pagerank…

> Things like Subjective logic are similar to the way humans establish trust in real life and search engines could improve their results by using it.

Trust in real life is broken. Google Search (1999 version) was a HUGE IMPROVEMENT over the "it's who you know" way of doing things that had always existed. Suddenly, you didn't have to know a guy who knew a guy who had a bike to find information about something.

It seems completely crazy to me that we would want to go back to the old way of doing things. I use Google to find out about things my friends don't know (if they did, I'd have asked them).

Re: Google is FUBAR

#127

Post by gorm » Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 7:55 PM UTC

Funny. extremetech uses at least 9 different pieces of tracking software on their page reported by ghostery

Re: Google is FUBAR

#128

Post by drhayes9 » Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 7:57 PM UTC

smspence wrote: post #102

Ecio78 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they already mine your email to show ads to you, they already do everything he talks about, they're just now going to let you have access to it through search instead of having to go to mail/reader/youtube/etc individually Uhm ok tell me if you like this scenario: * I'm fed up of my employeer so I'm sending tons of jobs applications from my personal gmail account * I dont write these mails while at work, but sometime…

What you are scared of is some hypothetical situation that there so-far is no evidence it could or would happen in the future? When you do web searches, your personal emails start popping up within the results? That actually happens, or is going to happen? When?

Relevant ads outed a gay teen on Facebook: http://unicornbooty.com/blog/2012/01/11/gay-teen-inadvertent...

Maybe not widespread, but definitely not entirely hypothetical.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#129

Post by aprescott » Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 8:01 PM UTC

Turing_Machine wrote: post #107

smspence wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you give a specific example of a search that you've done on Google that gives you bad results? And that would give you better "unbiased" results on DuckDuckGo? I would like to try and do a side-by-side comparison. Also, what do you mean by "unbiased"? What is the "bias" that Google has? I am trying to find real, concrete examples of all of the complaints in this thead, and I can't really find any.

I'm not the original poster, but it's really annoying to me that Google has changed its default behavior so it returns results that don't necessarily contain all my search terms, often higher on the page than results that do contain all my terms. While this may be helpful to the clueless, I'd love a "yes, I really know what I'm doing" user pref that lets me switch back to the old behavior.

Does this include so-called verbatim search? http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2011/11/search-using-your-t...

I don't use it but I'm curious to know if the problems you're encountering also happen with this new feature.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#130

Post by jmcmoto » Wed, Jan 25, 2012, 8:06 PM UTC

this argument is RETARDED. Just log out if you dont want personalized results. All these people writing articles are paid PR Shills for FB or Twitter or someone.