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

Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

pandodaily.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 301 posts

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#151

Post by karpathy »

ArcticCelt wrote: post #147
danilocampos wrote: post #56

A few decades from now, when someone writes up an HBS case study on Google, how will it read? My suspicion is that Google is going to treat us to a very painful object lesson: what happens to your business when you compromise the values of a beloved core product. Here's the thing: having the most complete, most accurate, most relevant search results means never having to say you're sorry. You can add ads, you can do…

Just to confirm what you say about Google trying to be too smart I just searched for "SPYW" because to be honest I have no idea what is that word or abbreviation. So Google decided that I am searching for the word SPYWare and I was no able to find a definition for SPYW. That's why I am reading the comments in case I can guess what it is.

it's simple! You just need to search "define: spyw"

Definition for spyw: Web definitions: (SPYWS) Stroke Prevention in Young Women Study. www.health.am/acronyms/s7/

you're welcome! (edit: to be fair though, the first link is a good one and explains the whole situation) (edit 2: oh wait! That's because of my personal search results. This is too funny)

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#152

Post by p0ss »

kmfrk wrote: post #133

I think the most important part of this HN thread is that people have gone from giving Google the benefit of the doubt to assuming that everything they do is a part of trying to fuck over the users in any way imaginable in a depiction that is beginning to exceed a vilification greater than Mark Zuckerberg. Google are having the biggest crisis of trust in their entire history. A Gmail alternative seems more welcome th…

Google lost me at Nymwars, they banned me, a loyal customer who had given them loads of money, for using the same name I use all over the net. That was the binary switch for me, perhaps they had been eroding my trust for years, but there was a clear snapping point where they jumped from good guys to bad guys, and it was a calculated business move on their part.

I am now weening myself off google, its hard, they own half the net, but when their own employees are being silenced for defending my best interests, it is time to leave.

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#153

Post by dkarl »

6ren wrote: post #137
pshc wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding your first complaint, I find that 90% of the time the suggestion for a different spelling is in fact the search I wanted. The 10% of cases where I was searching for something obscure do stick out in my mind more, but I'm OK with that. They've optimized for the common case, typos, which is a win overall. I haven't noticed any extraordinary synonym replacements myself, though, the stem's always been the same.…

I've noticed both (typos and stems), and am impressed with how accurate it is. I miss literal search, and then they removed +keyword - but fortunately, quotes do it now. For example, rip and "rip" give slightly different results, with different emphasis within them: https://www.google.com/search?q=rip https://www.google.com/search?q=%22rip%22 Google's predictive search while you type is amazing, especially because it…

Google's search tweaks are making it better and better for most users. For me, though, I want the old simple-minded Google back. I would rather get what I ask for, even when when it's garbage in/garbage out, than wonder if some heuristic somewhere is filtering out the pages I want to see.

For example, I'm sure Google "knows" that I am a monolingual English speaker, but I can read enough German, French, and Spanish to struggle through a blog post telling me how to diagnose or work around a problem with my computer when that's my only choice. (Especially now that Chrome will run the whole thing through Google Translate for me.) I set an option in Google to show me pages in other languages, but these days I don't see non-English results anymore unless there are only a few pages of search results. It seems like non-English pages are penalized heavily, regardless of how high they rank as search results. (Or did everyone who used to post about technical topics in German switch to English over the last five years?)

Even if that's not true, the fact that I even think about it is a bother. I wish Google would be more simple-minded so I could have more confidence in how I understand the results.

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#154

Post by minwcnt »

Aloisius wrote: post #89
pg wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter and Foursquare are fairly prominent examples, though in both cases the founders were people who became Google employees when their previous startups were acquired. Among startups we've funded, I know at least Greplin, Optimizely, Appjet, and ReMail have/had founders who previously worked at Google. I'm sure there are at least that many more, but I don't remember where most of the people we funded worked befor…

Hrm. AppJet and ReMail were both acquired by Google though. Greplin and Optimizely Googlers both had years at other companies between Google and the founding their companies. I guess Biz Stone came directly from Google to found Twitter. Given Google's size and the quality of the people who go in there, I'd have expected dozens if not hundreds of companies to be spawned by ex-Googlers. I often wonder if certain compan…

From what I understand, turnover at Google is very low, especially among high ranking engineers. That might be why you see fewer ex-Googler startups than one might expect.

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#155

Post by joebadmo »

surferbayarea wrote: post #138
joebadmo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your premise. The two previous "compromises" you cite are both examples of giving you what you want, instead of what you said you want. While your anecdotal data says that you are annoyingly misled by that, I'm sure there's a measure of selection bias there, and I'm sure Google has a lot more than anecdotal data. I'm a bit confused by the recent outcry about relevance. Do people disagree that social s…

> Do people disagree that social signals can add to relevance? If not, then how does Google get these social signals, if they're locked out of FB and twitter? Let's say fb/twitter release a public api to access the social signals. So things like number of likes on a particular news page. In return, is google willing to release the data on number of clicks on a particular search result for all queries? Seems a bit hyp…

Your comment is very confusing to me. If it's a public API, why would Google have to return anything?

And Google's proposition to all web sites everywhere is that in exchange for indexing their content, they provide exposure through the best search engine and the main interface to the web for most people. This is also what FB and Twitter are complaining about: that they aren't receiving proper exposure.

It seems like a fair deal to me, and for Twitter and FB to be complaining about lack of exposure when they're trying to charge for the data that would appropriately affect their ranking is what seems absurdly hypocritical to me.

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#156

Post by MaysonL »

tedsuo wrote: post #50
cbs wrote: post #37

Guys, unless you're actually a player, save yourself the headache and don't get caught up in this little valley tiff. I think SPYW is dumb, but google is trying something to improve search results, it happens to use data that they have on the user. I don't think they need permission from everyone in the valley with a sign-in service they can't crawl before they're allowed to make changes that are meant to improve sea…

“Most portals show their own content above content elsewhere on the web. We feel that’s a conflict of interest, analogous to taking money for search results. Their search engine doesn’t necessarily provide the best results; it provides the portal’s results. Google conscientiously tries to stay away from that. We want to get you out of Google and to the right place as fast as possible. It’s a very different model.” -L…

And note what's at the top of almost any page of Google search results: paid ads (granted, they're in a different color, so you know they're ads, but they're still at the top of the page). Not so different a model.

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#157

Post by 6ren »

joebadmo wrote: post #148
6ren wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed both (typos and stems), and am impressed with how accurate it is. I miss literal search, and then they removed +keyword - but fortunately, quotes do it now. For example, rip and "rip" give slightly different results, with different emphasis within them: https://www.google.com/search?q=rip https://www.google.com/search?q=%22rip%22 Google's predictive search while you type is amazing, especially because it…

However... artificially ranking their own links, ranking that isn't objective, is deadly to the utility of their search, and to their brand. In the past, google products have seemed to rank highly, but google claimed this was their natural rank. What is the evidence against them now? I think the notion of objectivity in search is a fallacy, and I would hesitate to characterize the addition of social search as artific…

Yes, I agree that social search can improve accuracy, and that google knows more about its own social information so it can use it more accurately.

Artificially inflating that, for the purpose of pushing their product, is the problem (that's how I'd define "artificial ranking" - ranking on a basis other than returning a page of search results for the user). This avoids the problematic term "objective".

I don't buy the "means to an end" argument. If google really is doing that, it means worse search results, loss of user confidence, and antitrust litigation (abuse of market power).

BTW: the first search example "people and places" seems to require a google+ account (as it wouldn't give me results unless I signed up). I'm happy for a google+ search to yield google+ results.

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#159

Post by nostrademons »

staunch wrote: post #23

I would be much more interested at working at the new Page dominated Google than the old Schmidt one. At least he's trying to do what Steve Jobs did so well: make big leaps forward. Apple found it necessary to own more and more pieces of the stack to innovate. Google is finding itself in the same position. Almost all of the best products are restricted/closed/proprietary systems. Macs, OSX, iPhone/iPad, Facebook, Twi…

"Almost all of the best products are restricted/closed/proprietary systems."

This makes me really sad. It might be necessary, but you also miss out on a lot of innovation that happens when people can build off the work of others.

To steal your examples, would there be a market for the Mac or OS X if IBM had not licensed PC clones? Would there be Facebook/Twitter/GMail if the Internet had not been public-domain?

Re: Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

#160

Post by pluies_public »

davux wrote: post #127
thought_alarm wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you google it, it's currently the 3rd and 4th search results. Now, if you google SPYW on Bing then it's nowhere to be found, and that's ultimately why I continue to use Google for search regardless of whatever nonsense they put in the side bar.

I just checked on Bing and it's in the description of the second result, from a Jan 13th article. http://www.bing.com/search?q=SPYW > Jan 13, 2012 · Summary: Google’s Search Plus Your World (SPYW) announcement has ruffled some feathers. Both Facebook and Twitter have reacted ... I've been banging the "Bing needs to do so much better to make even a tiny dent" drum for a while now, but they've made strides in the past…

They're probably customising the search results somehow; just as the GP I don't see any mention of Google's SPYW when opening your link.
Post reply on HN