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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?

#211

Post by scohesc »

LeonTheremin wrote: post #148
dorfsmay wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my anecdotal experience, FB is using non-logged in google search results to select which ad to show you. I assume google sells those to FB, based on IP address. But, my YouTube and Google search and ads, whole logged in, are based on what I do while logged in only. I might be naive but I have not seen correlation between my logged-in and my non-logged-in life within google products.

Another hypothesis: Silicon Valley is using your inner speech - obtained with electromagnetic surveillance and machine learning. People try to explain it away as Big Tech's blackbox AIs being good of making inferences from "public" data, but fail to consider that their body betrays their mind by leaking information under the skin, which can be picked up silently with microwaves.

I am confused but very interested.

Do you have any sources or information I can look up to study this?

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#212

Post by LionTamer »

shreyshnaccount wrote: post #167
endemic wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time to get back to curated lists of interesting websites.

I unironically do that. Maybe I should publish? We could make a small project that just has interesting websites and reviews? Yelp for the interesting web?

Please do. One of my favorite things about Hacker News is that it exposes me to a treasure chest of interesting and informative blogs and other content (both archival/“historical” and current) that would be unlikely to show up in my search results.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#213

Post by squarefoot »

jsnell wrote: post #52

The most concrete complaints in this piece appear to be: - Google News includes stories from a source that the author doesn't want anyone else to be able to see. (If they just didn't want to see those stories themselves, then there's an easily accessible "hide sources from XXX" entry in the context menu). - Generic complaints about shopping searches returning links to Amazon, or pages having referral links to Amazon.…

> Google News includes stories from a source that the author doesn't want anyone else to be able to see.

I'm not the OP, however, being the service called News, one would expect it to contain actual news and not 100% biased opinion.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#214

Post by cmsj »

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…

Yes, I miss it very much. I miss the days when people wrote RFCs for something they felt deserved to exist, rather than business plans for something they hope someone will invest in.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#215

Post by FunnyBadger »

Well, corporations have finite lifespans just like all things biological.

The average lifespan of an established corporation is only about 20 years. The average lifespan of a new company is only 10 years. So anything that lasts longer is living on borrowed time.

It's like reaching your 50s-60s which when the 2nd derivative of death goes into overdrive. Only by surviving that period is there evidence as proof of life that you are doing something right or had good genes. The same for corporations and then 10-20 year period.

So Google in exactly in this cusp. They may not survive it but "that will be that" without moral or ego judgement. If they die now, it's simply that they didn't not find the magic elixir of life or purpose or business model. I think the handwriting about that is already on the wall - they did NOT and we are merely watching its decline. It just happens.

The best way to avoid the problems of dependency on an entity is to not become dependent in the first place.

Just like allowing one to be coddled and never growing up is a bad long-term strategy because that person's parents won't live forever and they will survive parents alone. They will be ill-prepared to do without but nothing in this universe can undo that reality once it happens. The answer is always for a parent to make sure your children are independent and well-prepared enough to live without you. Not doing that is misparenting.

In the economic sphere, blindly becoming dependent on only one technology or vendor is similarly an error on your part. Either create alternatives or find ways to live differently that do not require it in the first place.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#216

Post by FunnyBadger »

markers wrote: post #88

Started paying for Kagi.com recently and is very satisfied with the results. Visiting Google again after being used to Kagi is an interesting and uncomfortable experience, it's very easy to become accustomed to how much ads and irrelevant information Google actually displays. The ability to boost your favorite sites is a really nice feature, especially for developers. Also not having to sift through all the content-s…

Doesn't work with a VPN.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#217

Post by AtNightWeCode »

justinclift wrote: post #68
AtNightWeCode wrote: post #61

My guess at what happened at Google. Stupid tech guys high up in the hierarchy with too much power that overrides what the marketing people are saying. One of the most amateurish things you can do is thinking that the data from product A is relevant for product B.

Another bad source of ideas is sometimes business people without ethics (or just plain short term thinking), who don't understand or care about the technology, and override the people who do care and/or understand how things work.

Yeah, very true, my naive view of G though is that they overvalue tech.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#218

Post by nielsinho »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #208
sofixa wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And gmail etc has a shit ton of ads Where? There are, sometimes, 1-2 ads in the "Promotions" tab, which i really wouldn't call "a shit ton". Breitbart and Epoch Times shouldn't come up anywhere close to anything with "News" in the name.

Dunno about you, but easily half the emails I get are advertisements.

Are you sure it's Gmail sending you those advertisements?

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#219

Post by phendrenad2 »

Zak wrote: post #93
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…

Much of that still exists. It's just harder to find than it used to be because the corporate stuff is so loud. There are a lot of little things that could make the non-corporate internet more appealing to the average person. Why, for example can't I have a shared identity across several independent forums? OpenID came out long ago.

You're... right in that that stuff still exists. Many websites from 2004 are still online. But many are not. And new sites haven't been created. Instead, sites like reddit/facebook/twitter have captured all new content.

Re: Who is going to replace Google for us?

#220

Post by phendrenad2 »

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…

> Maybe there’s a way to restore the Web of old

I don't think so, but the next-best thing might be to build an inverted search engine, where instead of crawling the web, people submit their sites to the index. I can imagine a company like Mozilla doing this to preserve the open web (if Mozilla were interested in preserving the open web).

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