Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click • Hacker News Board

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#171

Post by rchaud » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 7:23 PM UTC

rlanday wrote: post #135

scott_s wrote: post #4

The presumption here, as I understand is, is that a zero-click search happened because Google used one of their inline apps to answer a question. (For example, if I search "population of new york city", I get a big and bold answer along with a graph that shows NYC's population over time, as well as LA and Chicago.) But I'm not convinced that's necessarily true. I frequently search for things to get a general idea of…

Google’s currently helping to perpetuate the myth that New York is a growing city and its population is at an all-time high of 8.623 million. In reality, it’s a dying city, and the current best estimate is 8,398,748; every bureau except Staten Island is losing population. People are fleeing New York (both the city and upstate) due to high taxes, crumbling infrastructure, bad weather, and a generally poor standard of…

Sure, but "nuance" and "context" is not what Google is trying to optimize for. They are going for the "instant fact check" audience, like the sidekick gophers on podcasts who look stuff up while the main host and their guest warbles on.

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#172

Post by jodrellblank » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 7:24 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #149

SilasX wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, I think there's scumminess on both sides, since (as GP noted) even simple sites (e.g. for lyrics) are bloated and unusable. Before: User: Hey Google, what's the monthly payment on a 20-year mortgage with 3.9% APR? Google: Oh, MortgateSite would know, go there. MortgageSite: Here's your calculator. User: Okay, let me put in the numbers ... awesome, thanks! Oh, neat, they can hook me up with lenders. Let me take a…

Perfect world: User: Hey Gateway, what's the monthly payment on a 20-year mortgage with 3.9 APR? Gateway: Here's your calculator, already prefilled with the data taken from your query. Done. The problem with all these little sites is, besides bloat, that the "Oh, neat, they can hook me up with lenders. Let me take a look." ends up with user getting malware and/or scammed. The problem with Google is that they can hard…

Perfect world:

User: I can afford a livable four walls and a roof from a small amount of savings, without needing to mortgage decades of my future. Brilliant.

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#173

Post by persistent » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 7:28 PM UTC

mips_avatar wrote: post #131

Article should be: Avast antivirus users click less than half of google searches. Their data isn’t representative of the market broadly. For one thing Microsoft claims bing has 9% market share, while avast pegs it as 1.4% market share. https://mobile.twitter.com/MSFTAdvertising/status/8982080475...

It's even more biased than this because it's desktop-only, Windows-only population. Mobile is HUGE.

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#174

Post by not_a_cop75 » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 7:28 PM UTC

This sounds a lot like "click fraud" only this time "search fraud".

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#175

Post by MereInterest » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 7:29 PM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #120

wongarsu wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good comparison here is WolframAlpha, which can also answer all those queries (I was a bit surprised that the Texas Rangers example worked, but it does [1]). Most of their data comes from a curated list of primary sources, not Wikipedia or random websites. 1: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=texas+rangers+next+gam...

Curated might be better, Google has been wrong in their answers in the past.

I think the best one I've seen was when Google's natural language processing mistook the subject of a sentence. Rather than saying that the Mariner 10 space probe used a gravity assist on Venus to reach Mercury, it instead said that Mercury received a gravity assist from Venus.

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#176

Post by ocdtrekkie » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

Nasrudith wrote: post #147

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they really though? See my comments on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20688022 Essentially, if Google's data source isn't getting paid, the data source is not going to remain accurate, and hence, neither will Google.

I don't see the relationship either way between payment and accuracy. Paying people is no guarantee of accuracy in either direction. Heck paying people for it encourages putting any ole bullshit there to farm it.

Websites which have gone out of business cannot provide Google updated data.

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#177

Post by michaelterryio » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

The problem seems apparent to me. Google has a monopoly on websites being able to promote themselves.

There are plenty of other channels, but none with remotely the reach or trust of the US's overwhelmingly dominant search engine.

By dint of this fact, they can steal the content of those who actually produced it. What are you going to do, deindex your site? That's death, because Google is a monopoly.

In the short term it seems good for the end user. But in the long term, Google having a monopoly on distributing the world's information seems like an obvious threat.

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#178

Post by ocdtrekkie » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 7:33 PM UTC

vilhelm_s wrote: post #151

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, simple math isn't, but think about your currency conversion, your weather lookup, or your sports schedule. Where did Google get the data for those things? Does whoever provided that data have expenses, and did Google compensate them in any way for those expenses or did Google lift the data for free with GoogleBot?

I think they generally pay for it. It came up with song lyrics a couple of weeks ago, where Genius accused Google of scraping lyrics from Genius, but as it turns out Google payed a third party vendor LyricFind for them, and LyricFind pays the copyright holder, so if anything it seems Genius was more in the wrong... https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/18/18684211/google-song-lyri...

How was Genius in the wrong? They were not paid for the service, and the data was coming from them. It is possible LyricFind stole the lyrics from Genius, but then Genius is still not in the wrong to sue them for scraping their site.

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#179

Post by beat » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 7:35 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #149

SilasX wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, I think there's scumminess on both sides, since (as GP noted) even simple sites (e.g. for lyrics) are bloated and unusable. Before: User: Hey Google, what's the monthly payment on a 20-year mortgage with 3.9% APR? Google: Oh, MortgateSite would know, go there. MortgageSite: Here's your calculator. User: Okay, let me put in the numbers ... awesome, thanks! Oh, neat, they can hook me up with lenders. Let me take a…

Perfect world: User: Hey Gateway, what's the monthly payment on a 20-year mortgage with 3.9 APR? Gateway: Here's your calculator, already prefilled with the data taken from your query. Done. The problem with all these little sites is, besides bloat, that the "Oh, neat, they can hook me up with lenders. Let me take a look." ends up with user getting malware and/or scammed. The problem with Google is that they can hard…

It's not even malware/scams - it's just "Person who wants a mortgage calculator" is "person who is interested in getting a mortgage", which is some seriously high-value data. There's a lot more profit in selling you on to mortgage lenders (with a lot of data, like your budget, pre-filled) than selling you to scammers.

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#180

Post by ocdtrekkie » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 7:36 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #144

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the inherently problem is that they need to be held liable for the rest. Because the rest is often criminal activity of which those platforms are making a profit. Perhaps removing Section 230 isn't enough , by your definition, because we need a law that explicitly holds platforms liable for profits generated from illegal activity.

Section 230 didn't prevent Google from being fined $500M for publishing ads for Canadian pharmacies selling drugs to US citizens. What kind of illegal activities are you talking about, exactly?

Google regularly distributes malicious websites and malware through ads, and refuses to delist reported malicious websites. (Google Ads is the primary distributor of Windows PC malware today, if my customer support experience is any indication.) And the problem is that Google has a perverse incentive: More bidders for ads means higher bids. Since malicious actors raise the prices, they benefit from bad actors selling ads.

And the problem is that even if someone finally comes in and shuts those actors down, Google kept all the profit from the malicious activity. In order to incentivize Google to police it's ad platform, we need to implement a requirement which seizes all revenue from malicious advertising, retroactively when a malicious account is flagged/reported.

If Google is losing revenue on allowing bad actors on their ad platform, they'll be incentivized to quickly respond to reports and remove them so that legitimate ads, which they make money on, can have those ad slots.