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Who is going to replace Google for us?

michaeldehaan.substack.com

131–140 of 229 posts

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth will always be very unequal, see the Mathew principle - just like a few songs have the most listeners and a few books the most readers. And it's hard to stay at the top too, so the elites are always changing. The real issue comes when the really powerful can inflate their and their friends assets at will.

Inequality fluctuates. Furthermore, I recall reading once that wealth inequality was positively correlated with mental illness, even in the rich of a society. As such, even if there is always some inequality, I think it is worthwhile to try to reduce it, although by boosting the lower part of scale. In other words, if you live in a world where only the rich have cars, you reduce inequality by making cars for the poor…

> In other words, if you live in a world where only the rich have cars, you reduce inequality by making cars for the poor like Henry Ford, not by taking rich people's cars.

Then Henry Ford displaces John Jacob Astor. You still have wealth inequality, in fact it might have even increased. But the poor now have on-demand mobility to any part of the country in a matter of days.

I don't understand the focus on relative wealth. Why should someone not have, to borrow a phrase, more money than God, if it's not being stolen from others. Why should ability and capital be envied instead left to its own devices?

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#132
post #75

Do people miss the Google of old, or the Web of old? The Web used to be very information dense. It was built from the ground up by specialists and enthusiasts, educational and governmental institutions, and groups of like-minded individuals. Then it became commercialized and commodified. Entire industries popped up to shovel mass-produced crap to masses of people through Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc. Forums became s…

> the Web of old No

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use google news in an incognito window?

You would need incognito, VPN'd, and non-JS tab to not be tracked by websites.

In my anecdotal experience, FB is using non-logged in google search results to select which ad to show you. I assume google sells those to FB, based on IP address.

But, my YouTube and Google search and ads, whole logged in, are based on what I do while logged in only. I might be naive but I have not seen correlation between my logged-in and my non-logged-in life within google products.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#134
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I agree with that but also I think it needs something like groups like Facebook has. I only want to see gardening stuff today, for example. I do like the whole mood though... it's not the battlefield that Twitter is.

It seems to me that use case is better served by forums, but it would be nice if I could use my Mastodon (or Diaspora, Frendica, Pixelfed, etc...) account as my identity on multiple forums. I don't think it's necessarily desirable for one piece of software to try to do everything, but it's great when different services can talk to each other.

Yeah, that would work too but it's kind of hard to find forums since reddit dominates all search results... I've been trying to train myself to look for them specifically though.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#135

Google News is worthless because most of the worthwhile news on the Internet has been paywalled. The equivalent to the old Google News is Apple News, which has a pay tier. The issue with Google is that people expect too much out of it. The author of this page, like many others, expects that there are many people out there putting great information on the Internet and doing it for free, and all Google needs to do is f…

Google is not a great tool for commerce. It wastes a great opportunity to close a sale by allowing garbage. They should just connect people to useful information.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#136
Nobody is going to replace Google, the web that Google crawls will simply be replaced by something better (just as open and interoperable, but better in other ways). Google will have a less relevant, even non-existent role, in this better web. This is how powerful companys with moats eventually lose in the end. A structural change makes the land they are defending less valuable

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#137
post #41
post #28

The fallacy of youth is that one of extremes. Things are never as bad as they seem. Likewise they're never really as good as they seem. The latter I think explains a lot of nostalgia and holding onto the first "past" we lived through. At the very least it's easy to view that as our baseline. What's "normal", if you will. I say this because as hard as can be to imagine how something like Google will cease to be domina…

So, don’t worry, it all work out? Vast wealth being sucked up by a few people while huge swaths of society have little to no ability to handle a $1000 financial hit? Passing the big ball of wealth between a few select people and families over history is acceptable? The fallacy is in thinking that society will always be benevolent and never needs to be corrected or reconsidered.

This way of looking at things assumes that wealth is a finite resource, and that by some people having a lot it is depriving others.

Wealth doesn't work like that, though. It's not a zero sum game.

Wealth is infinite, and can be created from nothing by providing a good or service that people need.

I had a friend who was a multimillionaire, got there by building stone walls.

Another friend who's an immigrant, worth over ten million, got there by making custom iron and steel windows and doors.

I have a friend who's worth over a million, got there by working hard and saving his whole life.

Another friend who's worth over thirty million, got there by making web sites for auto dealerships.

Another one who's worth a bit over a million, got there by risking his life savings on opening up a winery.

A former neighbor had a multi-million dollar home. Also an immigrant. Got there by cleaning restaurant grease traps.

I could go on.

Wealth can be created from nothing. From something as simple as an idea.

The only qualifying factor is that you have to make something that other people want. It can be anything, a wall, a song, a good bottle of wine, an iron door, a NFT (ugh), ...anything.

There's no limit to wealth.

Our poorest today live like kings compared to those in poverty 100 years ago.

Because we've created massive, overwhelming wealth in this country.

And there's no end in sight. All we need is the willingness to do it.

To spend our time building up rather than tearing down.

Looking at someone's wealth and saying "that's not fair, we should destroy that and give it to others" is a juvenile solution that destroys societies.

I understand the temptation though. It's harder to create than to destroy.

It takes more intellectual rigor. It takes a leap into self ownership and responsibility.

That's hard to do when we've been taught from a young age that our situation is someone else's fault.

Class warfare is a tool that's used by conmen to gain short term power.

It ends up destroying everything.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#138
post #36
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does DDG do it?

they use bing. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo and https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...

Why is this comment downvoted?

Factual.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#140
post #106
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Na, just introduce a social safety net, like most of europe had for some time.

So, put “those people” in the Matrix, so they won’t be a problem instead of addressing the real problem of a lopsided economic system is the answer?

Lopsided economic system is not a problem, it is a feature.
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