171–180 of 212 posts
I have made this case before, but I will make it again. The Internet is the largest information system in the world, and Google is the primary portal into that information system. Google's "organic" results are accompanied by AdWords results, which are based on a mixture of bid price and relevance. These ads are marked with a small "Ad" label that many people miss, and even those who know they're ads can't really "un…
Read the original PageRank paper. Page and Brin themselves acknowledge that (while they were still academics): [L]ess blatant bias are likely to be tolerated by the market. For example, a search engine could add a small factor to search results from "friendly" companies, and subtract a factor from results from competitors. This type of bias is very difficult to detect but could still have a significant effect on the…
It was ridiculous that you would type in "Delta Airlines tickets" and the results would go: United Airlines, TWA, Fly By Night Corp, Rickety Rickshaw Airlines, We Barely Stay in the Air, and DuctTape & Flights.
The results were so bad that when Google came along and used the PageRank feature to deliver information, it was a godsend (Thanks God). Try searching for something on Google today and there is a high likelihood that you find or at least get close to it.
Just remembering how bad it was back in the day until the web search engines got their act together and became Bing and Google.
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Personally I've found Google to be frustratingly difficult to search in recent years. I can't find articles & essays that I remember fondly because the namespace is so polluted with Great SEO.
Have you fond a better search engine? I keep failing to find what I need on DuckDuckGo or it's kin and having to go onto Google, where I find what I was looking for. Of course, one can always suggest that I am just better attuned to Google (I have Google Fu from long experience with Google and wrongfully expect DuckDuckGo Fu to be the same skill and have not developed DuckDuckGo Fu).
Search for programmers?
At the risk of sounding melodramatic, the internet is a great idea but the implementation sucks and there's no easy way to fix it.
I have made this case before, but I will make it again. The Internet is the largest information system in the world, and Google is the primary portal into that information system. Google's "organic" results are accompanied by AdWords results, which are based on a mixture of bid price and relevance. These ads are marked with a small "Ad" label that many people miss, and even those who know they're ads can't really "un…
The library is a catalog of books produced by publishers for the sake of making money. Your example doesn't hold weight, as there is no "purity of information". Even your own insights are filtered through the perspective of your personal influence, your wants, your desires, your history, etc. Google is no different. The organic search results are largely from commercial, or at a minimum, self-interested sources. That…
That's not what he asked though. Generally libraries don't have special "sponsored" books, and don't control and push certain books to people more than others.
Those libraries that do, fall into 2 categories:
1) Promoting widely recognized cultural works (e.g. with events like "Mark Twain Year", etc).
2) Promoting some ideological agenda (e.g. a creationist library in a religious school).
The latter are dangerous.
Google, besides the opportunities for pushing its own corporate/political agenda, has also financial motives for pushing ads/brands.
Besides there's another key difference: there are thousands upon thousands of libraries (and people don't care much about them anyway). There's only one Google (and the majority of web users use it everyday).
>That doesn't make it wrong.
I wonder what some people DO find wrong. Apart from things like cannibalism and hurting kittens, which we all probably agree on.
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Have you fond a better search engine? I keep failing to find what I need on DuckDuckGo or it's kin and having to go onto Google, where I find what I was looking for. Of course, one can always suggest that I am just better attuned to Google (I have Google Fu from long experience with Google and wrongfully expect DuckDuckGo Fu to be the same skill and have not developed DuckDuckGo Fu).
> I keep failing to find what I need on DuckDuckGo or it's kin and having to go onto Google What's an example of a search that fails to find what you need?
Various programming questions. Don't have an example right now, sorry.
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Are you kidding me? Of the major companies out there, almost all of them made money from bad products. McDonald's food is so unhealthy it makes you ill almost immediately when it's even edible. Comcast is hated almost universally for their crap internet and crapper customer service. Fox News makes money by actively deceiving their customers. These aren't exceptions to the rule: these are the rule . They're leaders in…
I disagree with you on every point here. McDonalds provides a consistent array of food and beverages across many countries, and many people (especially children) enjoy the experience in their restaurant. Comcast is often the only provider of Internet services, and in other instances provides faster or cheaper service than their competitors. Fox News is like every other news channel, in that it informs their viewers w…
Yes. Bad requires either a quantifiable judgement (McDonalds fares poorly in healthiness, nutricients, calories and lots of other metrics), or a qualitative one, based on some sort of agreed ypon "what constitutes good food" standard -- which in the end comes from what vision one has for the world.
Even if the latter is not objectively verifiable (that a steak at Peter Luger is better than a Chipotle one for example), I still find a society where isn't enough common agreement to label McDonalds as bad, a sad one.
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The library doesn't make money through directing you to particular books or sell publishers your reading habits.
That's because the library is funded by taxpayers – it doesn't need the money. How would you feel about a government-sponsored search engine? I think China has one of those.
> Today's features article: McDonalds!
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So what's better about paying via taxes instead of paying directly?
When something is paid for directly (and consequentially cannot be afforded by some), it will be biased towards the opinions of its backers, and thus, the wealthy.
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The library is a catalog of books produced by publishers for the sake of making money. Your example doesn't hold weight, as there is no "purity of information". Even your own insights are filtered through the perspective of your personal influence, your wants, your desires, your history, etc. Google is no different. The organic search results are largely from commercial, or at a minimum, self-interested sources. That…
> The library is a catalog of books produced by publishers for the sake of making money. That's not what he asked though. Generally libraries don't have special "sponsored" books, and don't control and push certain books to people more than others. Those libraries that do, fall into 2 categories: 1) Promoting widely recognized cultural works (e.g. with events like "Mark Twain Year", etc). 2) Promoting some ideologica…
A system that incorporates bias is vastly more useful than one that ignores it.