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Mourning Google

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Re: Mourning Google

#251

Post by cogman10 »

MrPatan wrote: post #167
Chathamization wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the impression I have. I remember a little over a decade ago when the population at large was completely hyped about all of the world changing technology we were going to see coming from the moonshots at Google X. The excitement over Google Glass, the mystery over the Google barges. Eventually, people started wondering when these hyped up products in development were going to actually become products[1]. Not i…

The market, made up of a lot of people, seems to think the richest man in the world is pretty valuable. A subset of people around here don't think that way. Why? I have my own opinion, not very flattering.

I honestly don't follow your line of thinking.

How is the market saying that the richest man is pretty valuable? Because the richest man owns a significant number of shares in a company the market deems as valuable?

Re: Mourning Google

#252

Post by bluetomcat »

Multicomp wrote: post #216
Chathamization wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the impression I have. I remember a little over a decade ago when the population at large was completely hyped about all of the world changing technology we were going to see coming from the moonshots at Google X. The excitement over Google Glass, the mystery over the Google barges. Eventually, people started wondering when these hyped up products in development were going to actually become products[1]. Not i…

> People like to say, "But those people don't even create anything, they're just taking credit for other people's work!" But just letting smart people gather and work on pet projects doesn't seem to work particularly well either. Maybe having a headstrong product oriented person upstairs is useful/necessary. I mean, isn't that what Bell Labs basically was? Put smart people in a supportive playground and harvest the c…

Bell Labs worked during the Cold War, in a Keynesian economic system. They were focused at fundamental technology, not in creating an end-user service to conquer the world.

Re: Mourning Google

#253

Post by benterix »

Roark66 wrote: post #156
nostrademons wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This description actually makes me feel like the metaphor is more apt. The dinosaurs went down because they were large, complex lifeforms that required a vibrant, complex ecosystem to support them. Amidst a fundamental shift to that ecosystem, large complex organisms were the first to go down. This is a general pattern - complex systems are always the first to collapse when there's a shift in the ecosystem, because t…

>As for what will take them down - all large institutions are failing right now. The public education system. The health care system. The government. The mass media. The immigration system, and general idea of national borders. The zoning / building code / housing system. Childcare. Wouldn't surprise me if we see the financial system, currency, and military go down next. The trigger is part climate change, part demog…

> See for example Sweden, or France for where this path leads to.

I think mixing France and Sweden on this point makes no sense. France made a deliberate attempt to attract as many refugees (and, at the same time, non-refugee immigrants) as possible in a very short period of time; they understood where it leads to and backpedaled on too open policies but things want a bit too far and they need to deal with the consequences, mainly criminal gang bombings.

As for France, the situation is dramatically different. You have several generations of immigrants already, some feeling more French than the French if I may use this expression. This population is very heterogeneous but suffice it to say than when ISIS planned Bataclan attacks, they had to recruit people in Belgium. Also, the countries of origins for immigrants in both cases are very different and in the case of France related to the history of the country, the Algerian War etc.

So, if you wanted to lump the two together, it would be proper to say "Sweden and Merkel's Germany" (because today's Germany is quite different, too).

Re: Mourning Google

#255

Post by rchaud »

These blog posts eulogizing Google's culture death sidestep the elephant in the room; Google sells ads. Nothing else they produce makes money. Google Search didn't magically get dumber, they simply made a business decision to favor SEO-optimized junk sites, many of which run Google Ads.

There's an outdated saying that goes, "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?"

If Google was hiring only the best and brightest, surely they could have come up with something in 25 years besides ads that made money and could stand on its own two feet. Instead, there is:

- Youtube (unprofitable 18 years running)

- Android (dead in the water w/o Samsung)

- Google Cloud Platform

- Google Workspace

- hundreds of smaller projects that were sunset

For all the non-Ads people lamenting the end of the good ol' days, has there been any reflection from them on the fact that all the cool projects they worked on weren't profitable at all?

Re: Mourning Google

#256

Post by nostrademons »

glimshe wrote: post #160
nostrademons wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This description actually makes me feel like the metaphor is more apt. The dinosaurs went down because they were large, complex lifeforms that required a vibrant, complex ecosystem to support them. Amidst a fundamental shift to that ecosystem, large complex organisms were the first to go down. This is a general pattern - complex systems are always the first to collapse when there's a shift in the ecosystem, because t…

Large institutions have been "failing" for over a century, in most countries, similar to things in orbit being always "falling". Just go find old newspapers and you'll see similar wording. The constant criticism and renewal of our institutions is part of the system.

That's true but also very germane to the conversation here. Sure, life will go on. It's not guaranteed that life with Google will go on, or that FANG will be an acronym of interest anymore than the "Nifty Fifty" are today.

Re: Mourning Google

#257

Post by amadeuspagel »

SadCordDrone wrote: post #232
amadeuspagel wrote: post #202

> “Ten blue links” · I remember the dismissive phase well: Ten blue links was boring, it was the past, it was not what people wanted. They want answers to their questions, complete and correct, so much more wholesome than an abbreviated sampling of the General Internet Uproar. And that was partly right: When I type in “-12C in F” or “population of vietnam” I just want a number. > But those Ten Blue Links surfaced by…

> There's a reason that kids use TikTok as search engine on mobile. That's because kids are dumb and have no attention span to read anything. Source: I am from the same generation you talk of.

Reading is a skill. The more you read, the better you get. The laptop encourages you to surf (and surfing is reading), the phone encourages you to scroll, usually through images and videos.

Attention span is a separate issue. I lack the attention span to watch a short youtube video, but I can easily read long essays.

Re: Mourning Google

#258

Post by Slava_Propanei »

Certhas wrote: post #179
Roark66 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As for what will take them down - all large institutions are failing right now. The public education system. The health care system. The government. The mass media. The immigration system, and general idea of national borders. The zoning / building code / housing system. Childcare. Wouldn't surprise me if we see the financial system, currency, and military go down next. The trigger is part climate change, part demog…

With you on "institutions are not failing as such". As for biggest challenges: You _massively_ underestimate climate change, and the way it is entangled with everything else. There have always been authoritarian nations. The so called free world does not seem notably more corrupt than it was 50 years ago, it is in many ways freer than it has ever been (see the annoyance and backlash of those that don't think the free…

[dead]

Re: Mourning Google

#259

Post by otikik »

vanderZwan wrote: post #22

> To me this feels like a big inflection point, because around the stumbling feet of the Big Tech dinosaurs, the Web’s mammals, agile and flexible, still scurry. Tangent: I kinda hate this metaphor. It reinforces this incredibly outdated idea that dinosaurs - or any other extinct life-form - went extinct because they were an evolutionary dead end. (Also, since I do not know a single nerd who isn't into dinosaurs the…

A global pandemic

Re: Mourning Google

#260

Post by Apocryphon »

rezonant wrote: post #87
mbreese wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maps from 2005 was a very sleek product, but at the time there were no competitors on the web Mapquest would beg to differ. To me, the interface was the killer feature for Maps. The data and trip planning functionality existed already on the web (as my print outs of driving routes in the late 90s can attest to). But being able to just scroll around a new city was amazing. Every other site required clicking through…

Oof that's true I forgot about MapQuest.

Yo, where's the movie playin'? (Upper West Side, dude)

Well, let's hit up Yahoo! Maps to find the dopest route

I prefer MapQuest; (that's a good one, too)

Google Maps is the best; (true that;) double true!

So yeah, there was a third competitor-

https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2005/12/27/saturday-night-...

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