Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google has added ads on both its search page and Chrome://newtab

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 330 posts

Re: Google has added ads on both its search page and Chrome://newtab

#131

Post by Jensson »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #112
marcus_holmes wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say you're a decision-maker at Google (or Any Large Corp). You have a KPI to increase revenue by 5% this year. If you hit this KPI, then you get a bonus. If you get the bonus, then you can afford the thing that your partner has been wanting forever (or that will make your neighbours jealous, or whatever), and you get a happy life. You know that doing X will harm the company in the long term (defined as anything past…

How do we fix this loop in companies? It is a very serious problem for humanity’s future. It exists in government too. How do we reward long-term thinking and decisions?

This is essentially what corruption is. Fixing corruption is extremely hard, especially when it is less overt like this. The main thing you can do is to teach people how to spot bad apples and push them out, fire them or in other ways punish them and reduce the damage they can do. It shouldn't be culturally acceptable to be a bad apple, but that requires a cultural change and those are really hard to do.

Re: Google has added ads on both its search page and Chrome://newtab

#133

Post by falcor84 »

chatterhead wrote: post #117

The internet doesn't work without advertising. Almost as if the money to build all this infrastructure has to come from somewhere. If only we could create a digital token that would be in such demand it would generate its own network and infrastructure effect. Oh wait... they ruined that, too.

>Oh wait... they ruined that, too.

I lost you there, who is "they" referring to?

Re: Google has added ads on both its search page and Chrome://newtab

#134

Post by vehemenz »

atesti wrote: post #44

It's notoriously difficult to have a new tab page without ads/Google connections, but still keep the 8 thumbnails. One can change the search engine and then an alternate new tab page appears which is the right one: Only thumbnails. Unfortunately there is code in chrome to detect the search engine one confiured and activate the matching new tab page. I think they have one for ddg? Even creating a custom search engine…

There has been a blank new tab extension in Chrome for ages.

Re: Google has added ads on both its search page and Chrome://newtab

#135

Post by thih9 »

I suspect ungoogled-chromium[1] is not affected by google's changes to chrome://newtab . If anyone wants to stop using Chrome but isn't drawn to any of the alternatives, perhaps you'll like ungoogled-chromium.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ungoogled-chromium

Re: Google has added ads on both its search page and Chrome://newtab

#136

Post by ceejayoz »

Bootvis wrote: post #107
ceejayoz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it helps in the short term, and Wall Street doesn’t mind destroying companies over the long.

Why blame this on Wall Street? This idea is the idea of someone at Google, it was implemented by someone at Google, the decision to go ahead was approved by someone at Google.

The someones at Google are compensated significantly by shares of the company, traded on Wall Street, and some of them are compensated with even more shares if those shares do well.

Pretending the two are at arms length is a bit silly.

Re: Google has added ads on both its search page and Chrome://newtab

#138

Post by MarkPNeyer »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #26
glcheetham wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this harms their business then why would they keep doing it

Say you're a decision-maker at Google (or Any Large Corp). You have a KPI to increase revenue by 5% this year. If you hit this KPI, then you get a bonus. If you get the bonus, then you can afford the thing that your partner has been wanting forever (or that will make your neighbours jealous, or whatever), and you get a happy life. You know that doing X will harm the company in the long term (defined as anything past…

Why do you care if you harm the company long term? It’s not like you are tied to it’s performance forever. When equity and labor markets are liquid, why wouldn’t you make decisions that help you now, and cause long term hurt something you have no long term stake in? If you don’t, your peers will.

Re: Google has added ads on both its search page and Chrome://newtab

#139

Post by MarkPNeyer »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #112
marcus_holmes wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say you're a decision-maker at Google (or Any Large Corp). You have a KPI to increase revenue by 5% this year. If you hit this KPI, then you get a bonus. If you get the bonus, then you can afford the thing that your partner has been wanting forever (or that will make your neighbours jealous, or whatever), and you get a happy life. You know that doing X will harm the company in the long term (defined as anything past…

How do we fix this loop in companies? It is a very serious problem for humanity’s future. It exists in government too. How do we reward long-term thinking and decisions?

Private ownership of businesses, so long term consequences fall on someone with the authority to steer them right.
Post reply on HN