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To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

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Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#211

Post by dalbasal »

So... this article is a good example of how ??!? it gets once you move from "We gotta do something about these tech monopolies" into the "what should we do?" phase.

How exactly "do* you break up a Google or a FB so that (only one possible reason, but the one cited here) they don't control too much media/mind share?^

Laws usually want to be general, and my suggestion doesn't necessarily lend to that, but I'll suggest it anyway.

Facebook doesn't need to be broken up into several companies. It can just be shut down.

I don't mean that it should (justice-wise) be shut down. I just mean that we won't lack for social media. We will have social media alternatives the day after FB shuts down. Theres a chance we'll get something more open instead. There's a good chance we'll get several small replacements instead. There is 0-chance that we'll lack for ways to share posts and post pictures. This isn't Bell, where we need to keep the phones working. The phones will work fine with or without Facebook.

There is no need for a company to generate $70bn in revenue, in order for us to have social media. That's a key difference from all antitrust cases of the past.

YouTube is another sort of example. If it shuts down, alternatives will pop up with immediately...maybe open ones.

There are justice questions (is it fair to shareholders/employees/zuck?) There are legal validity questions (why FB and not apple?). But, for the practical questions... the problem is an easy one.

^fwiw, I also think this is the most worrying part. These companies have a tremendous control about how and what people think. They make Murdoch media look quaint.

Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#212

Post by colinmhayes »

astonex wrote: post #97

A list of websites and their content is really not useful at all. Anyone can get this themselves with some really simple programming. The actual hard part is when it comes to ranking and sorting the data in any useful way, and doing it within like 100ms. Plus various other issues like spam protection etc. This is where Google excels (at least in my opinion).

I wouldn't say that anyone can create an index with really simple programming. There are quite a few technical obstacles that "really simple programming" probably couldn't solve. That being said, I agree that any legitimate company would be able to create an index easily enough. The hard part is ranking and spam detection.

Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#213

Post by whalabi »

dkyc wrote: post #81
noahl wrote: post #61

Okay, this is a relatively serious proposal to require Google to allow API access to its search index, with the premise that it would democratize the search engine ecosystem. There are some issues with the regulations he proposes (you have to allow throttling to prevent DDoS attacks, and you can't let anyone with API access add content to prevent garbage results), but it's roughly feasible. The main problem is, I thi…

> Yes, Google has a huge index, but most queries aren't in the long tail. I'm not quite sure about that. 15% of Google searches per day are unique, as in, Google has never seen them before. [1]. That's quite an insane number. [1] https://searchengineland.com/google-reaffirms-15-searches-ne...

Now I feel bad for putting gibberish like jsjsjdkktkwoapaoalf in my address bar and searching Google to test if my internet is working..

Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#214

Post by zamalek »

GordonS wrote: post #195
b_tterc_p wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people do this? Or do you mean queries forwarded by home assistants trying to parse inputs?

Heh, yes, they do. Which is a reminder that devs are not "typical" users. As a developer, I search using keywords; for example, if I was looking for property for sale in Inverness, I might search for "property Inverness", whereas I've seen and heard "typical" users use something like "find me a 2 bedroom house with a garden for sale in the North of Inverness" - much more verbose, and containing stop words and phrases…

With voice I use sentences: it's far more reliable because of the Markov model (or whatever predictive model they are using).

Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#215

Post by _Codemonkeyism »

noahl wrote: post #61

Okay, this is a relatively serious proposal to require Google to allow API access to its search index, with the premise that it would democratize the search engine ecosystem. There are some issues with the regulations he proposes (you have to allow throttling to prevent DDoS attacks, and you can't let anyone with API access add content to prevent garbage results), but it's roughly feasible. The main problem is, I thi…

What Google has is "I'll google that".

Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#216

Post by exhaze »

mattferderer wrote: post #201

Is Google's Search quality that much better than Duck Duck Go or Bing? I get about the same quality of content when using any one of the three. All three are terrible at serving me up websites to buy crap when I typically want to learn about something. I would love a filter that says "Don't try to sell me anything"! I believe Google's biggest advantage is in their marketing & that the word "Google" now is a synonym f…

I don't know the answer to this - you could be right, but just outright questioning that Google's search quality is no better than DDG or Bing and basing it off of a single data point is pretty foolhardy. Your second statement reinforces this point - I've run a lot of Google ads, and they're quite effective. Google ads are very effective at selling things to people.

In the future, when coming up with an opinion about something, I'd encourage you to look at statistics and combine that with your own personal experience. You'll often learn something you didn't know, and come up with a more grounded opinion.

Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#217

Post by swalsh »

The data that google has holed up that I want more than anything else would be trends, broken down by page number. As interesting as the data of how often people search for a term is, I find it far more interesting when they can't find the thing they're searching for. That's a hole in the market.

Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#218

Post by zadkey »

have_faith wrote: post #164
b_tterc_p wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people do this? Or do you mean queries forwarded by home assistants trying to parse inputs?

> Do people do this? The calling card of the developer realising that real users never act like you expect :)

Real users will use your product in ways you never imagined.

Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#219

Post by utefan001 »

dkyc wrote: post #81
noahl wrote: post #61

Okay, this is a relatively serious proposal to require Google to allow API access to its search index, with the premise that it would democratize the search engine ecosystem. There are some issues with the regulations he proposes (you have to allow throttling to prevent DDoS attacks, and you can't let anyone with API access add content to prevent garbage results), but it's roughly feasible. The main problem is, I thi…

> Yes, Google has a huge index, but most queries aren't in the long tail. I'm not quite sure about that. 15% of Google searches per day are unique, as in, Google has never seen them before. [1]. That's quite an insane number. [1] https://searchengineland.com/google-reaffirms-15-searches-ne...

Sharing for anyone who didn't know there is a very good dataset you can use now. If you don't have a nvme ssd in your computer, I highly recommend getting one for fast i/o.

http://commoncrawl.org/ http://commoncrawl.org/the-data/ http://index.commoncrawl.org/

related.. Mark's blog is amazing and worth more than any data science degree imho.

https://tech.marksblogg.com/petabytes-of-website-data-spark-... https://tech.marksblogg.com

Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#220

Post by UncleMeat »

swebs wrote: post #186
nova22033 wrote: post #106

Caveat: The author is not a technologists Robert Epstein (born June 19, 1953) is an American psychologist, professor, author, and journalist. He earned his Ph.D. in psychology at Harvard University in 1981, was editor in chief of Psychology Today, He has also made some questionable claims about google manipulating search results to favor Hillary Clinton. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Epstein#cite_note-15 His r…

He does raise some good points in his findings: https://sputniknews.com/us/201609121045214398-google-clinton... I know Sputnik isn't a good source, but according to him, they were the only ones who would publish the findings without edits.

Thats a pretty strong indication that his claims are BS. Sputnik is a literal propaganda arm.
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