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Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

sparktoro.com

131–140 of 312 posts

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#131

> My anonymous source claimed that way back in 2005, Google wanted the full clickstream of billions of Internet users, and with Chrome, they’ve now got it. The API documents suggest Google calculates several types of metrics that can be called using Chrome views related to both individual pages and entire domains. What answer do the engineers at google working on this have for this violation of privacy?

> What answer do the engineers at google working on this have for this violation of privacy?

The same answer you probably have for the millions of questions about what the things you do that some other people find offensive to their personal views and beliefs.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#132

Most of the factors in ranking a page are no surprise. But i was surprised that having Product reviews on your site is apparently a demotion? Surely, many people are searching to find just that?

Years ago I had a site for deep fryer reviews. The whole thing existed to make money from Amazon’s affiliate program. I hadn’t personally used ANY of the deep fryers. Was just writing reviews based on features and other people’s reviews. In short, I ranked high in Google and added nothing of value to the world with that site.

There was a brief period of time where I made decent money with it until Google deranked all the product review websites.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#133

Sometimes I wonder how much better the internet would be hits on Google weren't directly tied to revenue from Google itself through its ad program. I am certain Google has made the internet and the world a worse place to live.

I imagine it would be a different flavour to what we have today, but the same intensity. Anything that so deeply penetrates daily life across the globe is going to bring enormous problems with it.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#134

If there are really 14,000 attributes, most of them will have a weight near 0, thus are irrelevant. If they would be all heavy weighted, the ranking would be rendered irrelevant due to the sheer amount of attributes.

Isn't that where deep learning comes into play?

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#135

Seriously considering switching back to Firefox after all these years.

Go for Firefox and keep ungoogled-chromium[0] for those sites that refuses to work properly on non-Chromium browsers.

[0] https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#136

Sometimes I wonder how much better the internet would be hits on Google weren't directly tied to revenue from Google itself through its ad program. I am certain Google has made the internet and the world a worse place to live.

As a user of Kagi and search.marginalia.nu I can tell you:

Quite a bit.

So much that now that I have what "everyone" asked Google for for years - that is blacklists - I hardly use them.

Why? Because with Kagi I get much better results out of the box.

I am fairly sure Googlers will tell me there are multiple safeguards to prevent the inclusion of Google ads from affecting ranking, to which I just have to say that the results speak for themselves.

Please note: I have only used Kagi for two years. I am only one user. But I am a user with 20 years of experience with Google and that got to count for something.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#137

Sometimes I wonder how much better the internet would be hits on Google weren't directly tied to revenue from Google itself through its ad program. I am certain Google has made the internet and the world a worse place to live.

It's not black and white. There was a lot of junk that was forced on us and that was removed thanks to Google. But I agree the direct relationship is inherently corrupting.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#138

Sometimes I wonder how much better the internet would be hits on Google weren't directly tied to revenue from Google itself through its ad program. I am certain Google has made the internet and the world a worse place to live.

Did you experience the Internet before google? The idea of a world where Alta Vista won is truly chilling.

Re: Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

#140

Sometimes I wonder how much better the internet would be hits on Google weren't directly tied to revenue from Google itself through its ad program. I am certain Google has made the internet and the world a worse place to live.

I mean... maybe, but not really. The first problem of the internet was that there wasn't that much content specifically. The first internet companies were the broadband providers who were developing content themselves, like AOL.

Google and the ad ecosystem they acquired was basically the flywheel that spurred content creation at scale. Anyone could jump in, follow a few guidelines and earn a living by producing content on the internet. The Youtube acquisition and monetization followed the same pattern.

Over time the market consolidated and got less and less competitive: less platforms with complete control of traffic and one-sided revenue sharing agreements. The guidelines so to speak on how content should look and feel like were algorithmically made stricter and stricter until everything looks, feels, sounds and reads the same.

The problem right now is that the platforms are still tightening their grip, and it's all tied to the approach of using AI to replace the content creators on the platforms from Google to Spotify to Meta, and carving the spared money to shareholders. And while the web has been shitty for a few years now, we're now seeing a sudden drop in quality because the average user has no recourse or alternative, and neither does the average creator have the means of distribution and monetization (not just publishing, that's been solved) to even find, let alone meet the new kinds of demand.

I'm certain that in a few years this will even out: new search engines, new aggregators and new feeds will emerge, but the content - money - network problem triangle remains as a fundamental problem of the internet.

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