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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?

#151

Post by m-i-l »

achenet wrote: post #123
m-i-l wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "In 100 years the descendants of Bezos won't be the ruling class in the same way the Vanderbilts, Astors, Rockefellers, Carnegies and Morgans aren't." Andrew Carnegie believed in 100% inheritance tax, on the condition that the money raised was used to provide a level playing field for absolutely everyone to have the same opportunities. I can't imagine many/any of today's billionaires believing this, given that pret…

> I can't imagine many/any of today's billionaires believing this, Haven't they all signed the Giving Pledge? > given that pretty much all of them have depended on the backing of generational wealth and the unequal opportunities that gave them to make their fortunes. While it is true that most of them come from upper-middle class backgrounds, AFAIK the vast majority of the fortunes of Page, Brin, Zuck, Bezos et al. i…

> "Haven't they all signed the Giving Pledge?"

While choosing to give most of your money to various charities, generally of your choosing and while you are still alive to see the benefits, is all well and good, it is very different from favouring having all your money being taken on death by a government you trust enough to use that money provide equal opportunities to all.

> "AFAIK the vast majority of the fortunes of Page, Brin, Zuck, Bezos et al. is "self-made" and comes from their companies."

For most of today's billionaires it isn't just an expensive education, it is family conenctions, e.g. Gates being set up with IBM via his mum, or family investments, e.g. Bezos, Zuckerberg, Page etc. having parents who gave or loaned them the money to start their companies (not to mention the safety net they'd have had should they have failed) - this isn't "self-made" in the traditional sense.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#152

Post by Pv9KKy3 »

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.

[flagged]

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#153

Post by bjelkeman-again »

timapplesauce wrote: post #147
dixego wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think that is not true in the EU at least. There are many credible news sources in the Northern European countries, that I follow, and they have different political leanings.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#154

Post by stuu99 »

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…

No post body was provided.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#155

Post by beej71 »

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…

I miss the non-commercial web of old. It's got into the point where I think my ultimate search engine is one that ranks pages by fewest ads.

And I get that people make a living by putting advertising on their pages. I'm not really against that. (Though I don't do that myself for my own reasons, I wouldn't presume to tell other people what to do with their websites.) But it's been abused to the point where number of ads on a page is a decent proxy for how crappy the content is.

When people decide to put ads on their content, the temptation is there to produce content to carry the ads. Before ads in the old days, you just produced content to produce content. Again, I'm not saying that ads are bad. But the purity of the old web is lost.

I don't think there's really a way to bring it back. I think the answer is that we just have to get better filtering on our ends to get the specific information that we want.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#156

Post by LeonTheremin »

Eric Schmidt is working to ensure Google won't be replaced and by that he means he will disable the semiconductors of anyone who tries. You don't own your Intel/AMD/Apple/Qualcomm device.

Only Russia and China have their own independent semiconductor fabs, so only they can, maybe, replace Google.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#157

Post by endemic »

jfim wrote: post #97
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…

Google also has an outsized influence on the kind of content that's on the web. At some point in the past, from what I remember, they started ranking blog content lower than more "authoritative" sources, hastening the decline of personal blogging. If you're wondering why every recipe on the internet has ten paragraphs on how this recipe is their grandmother's favorite and how it reminds the author of the freshness of…

Time to get back to curated lists of interesting websites.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#158

Post by timapplesauce »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #153
timapplesauce wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think that is not true in the EU at least. There are many credible news sources in the Northern European countries, that I follow, and they have different political leanings.

Unfortunately, in the United States all of our major news outlets are extremely biased and have been caught red-handed manipulating or outright lying about the news.

The only approach I've found is to consume a few news sources through the lens of their known biases in an attempt to get something resembling the whole picture.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#159

Post by mancerayder »

Google became more and more of a narrow nightmare over time, to the point that people have started added reddit to their search keyword since the results have become so controlled away from the search and towards some paid content or authoritative source (which usually is outdated).

But my question is why can't duckduckgo be the replacement?

The worry is that Google implicitly rewards some content over other content with views, and therefore promotes some production over other production. As another user wrote intelligently in this thread:

"At some point in the past, from what I remember, they started ranking blog content lower than more "authoritative" sources, hastening the decline of personal blogging. If you're wondering why every recipe on the internet has ten paragraphs on how this recipe is their grandmother's favorite and how it reminds the author of the freshness of summer produce, it's because that's the kind of content that Google will give a high ranking"

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#160

Post by mgdlbp »

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…

How old? The commercial aspect was already inseparable from the rise of the web in the mid-90s...countless startups of the dot-com boom scrambling to find a niche to turn a profit from. Many an interesting site shut down upon failing to do so, that's certainly unchanged to this day.
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