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Who is going to replace Google for us?

michaeldehaan.substack.com

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Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#141

Post by Zak »

guerrilla wrote: post #134
Zak wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can imagine paths to improvement that don't rely on Google improving its behavior or something displacing it as a search engine. For example, what if forum software spoke Activitypub so people could follow threads and boost insightful comments from Mastodon?

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#142

Post by Avtomatk »

ImpulseGuided wrote: post #69
Avtomatk wrote: post #2

regarding search engines, i find andisearch.com as better option for some cases (working as a software engineer)

>better option for some cases Can you tell us more about the kind of problems for which you receive better search results via andisearch.com?

For general search, andisearch and google gives you the same results... in andysearch i don't need to try 10 different combinations of the same sentence to get the expected results like in google, in andisearch i get the expected results almost at the first try (sometimes at the second one) for very specific searches.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#143

Post by Pv9KKy3 »

jsnell wrote: post #52

The most concrete complaints in this piece appear to be: - Google News includes stories from a source that the author doesn't want anyone else to be able to see. (If they just didn't want to see those stories themselves, then there's an easily accessible "hide sources from XXX" entry in the context menu). - Generic complaints about shopping searches returning links to Amazon, or pages having referral links to Amazon.…

The shopping links to SEO spammers and shopping comparison sites is in part because the govt has said google CAN NOT discriminate against these sites.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#144

Post by throwaway2056 »

No one. Nerds/geeks do not need one.

BTW, all nerds/geeks note that Google is not exclusively for you. Just walk to a cafe (not the one near FAANG campus). See those people with smartphone? They use Google. There are 100000x more such people compared to people that use substack.

> is impossible to contact a human

TBH, no one cares. I had friend that lost google account due to 2FA. But did they regret. No. It is only geeks/nerds that want to preserve their first email, photo for ever.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#145

Post by tiffanyh »

> Who is going to replace Google for us?

No one.

The only thing that could happen is Google is broken up like Standard Oil.

And frankly, Google over the last decade has made moves under the assumption they will be broken up (i.e., making each division a standalone business and Alphabet as a holding company - when structured this way, it makes a forced breakup much easier).

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#146

Post by fartcannon »

freyr wrote: 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…

HN reminds me a lot of the old web.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#147

Post by timapplesauce »

dixego wrote: post #99
xkbarkar wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea I thought the same. Sounded more like fragile “milennial” complaint than an actual good article with solid facts. You could find 100 solid ways to distrust google. Didnt think the author hit a single credible point.

If you don't think "Breitbart is not a credible news source" is not a valid point then oof, yikes, etc.

I'm curious, what is a "credible" news source these days?

I don't think any of the major news networks have much credibility any more, it's just that some may seem better than others simply because they align more with your particular personal opinions and biases.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#148

Post by LeonTheremin »

dorfsmay wrote: post #133
encryptluks2 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Another hypothesis: Silicon Valley is using your inner speech - obtained with electromagnetic surveillance and machine learning.

People try to explain it away as Big Tech's blackbox AIs being good of making inferences from "public" data, but fail to consider that their body betrays their mind by leaking information under the skin, which can be picked up silently with microwaves.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#149

Post by clairity »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #118
clairity wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

consider that your perspective might be biased by your temporal affiliation. for anyone paying even a modicum of attention, the direction google was headed was plainly evident by 2004 (when it went public and gmail launched). google clearly saw the web as both a threat and an opportunity (much like microsoft before it), and deigned to control it, not cultivate it as a public good. google never "pushed the web forward…

I would never deny a bias. But an organization like google doesn't have a singular mind or objective. it's full of a bunch of contradictory tendencies and opinions and motivations. And market forces aside, I think the bulk of the pre-Ruth/pre-Sundar leadership had a very pro "open web" opinion at least. And I'd say that even post-IPO they were able to mostly keep their mission statement (“organize the world’s informa…

> "...investors demanded... So they did what the market 'demanded'."

to be clear, the founders still had majority control, and so this was a proactive decision the leadership made to grow at all costs, to dominate the web. they weren't forced by investors or the market to do so, no matter the pressures surrounding them.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#150

Post by polote »

Me. The initial web 3 (the semantic web) could have killed Google. But it never worked, for ux perspective but also for the offer point of view.

The reality is that Google is trying to auto recognize things that humans could categorize themselves, and without a lot of work. And the owner of the information should not be the only one able to do that. We need more collaboration. The biggest pain is how to create a categorization system that works for everyone. I haven't seen any yet

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