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Google is FUBAR

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Re: Google is FUBAR

#261

Post by batista »

DanBC wrote: post #160
rodion_89 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are 'relevant' and 'accurate' different in this case? (serious question) For example if I search for "python books" I get results about books teaching the programming language. I'm a programmer and this makes sense in that it is both 'relevant' and 'accurate'. If my girlfriend does the same search she gets books about snakes. She is a biologist so it is again both 'accurate' and 'relevant'. The problem arrises if…

Google is great for the general population. You type a bunch of words, and Google will guess what you mean, and will usually return useful results. I don't want that. I don't mind having to work a bit harder to get results, so long as those results are excellent. So, for your example, I want to have to type an extra word (either programming or snakes or herpatology or whatever) to provide the context that Google woul…

I don't want that. I don't mind having to work a bit harder to get results, so long as those results are excellent. So, for your example, I want to have to type an extra word (either programming or snakes or herpatology or whatever) to provide the context that Google would otherwise get from wherever.

I'm all anti-Google, but this makes no sense to me.

You want to type an extra word?

"I don't want to be tracked and sold to advertisers", or "I don't want to be second-guessed" makes much more sense.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#262

Post by jmcqk6 »

cletus wrote: post #50

Disclaimer: I am a Google engineer. These opinions are my own. Nothing I say in any way represents the company's position, officially or unofficially. That being said, I see all this as much ado about nothing. Privacy policies are complex beasts governed by many regulatory environments. Reducing a huge number of these policies to a handful, announcing it ahead of time and giving you controls over privacy all seem lik…

>If we know something of your interests (based on G+ and/or search), isn't suggesting more relevant content to you on Youtube (as a purely hypothetical example) a good thing?

Generally speaking, yes, but there is the danger of creating a [filter bubble](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble).

Re: Google is FUBAR

#263

Post by joebadmo »

5l wrote: post #224
joebadmo wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google, the institution, just has not to be evil, as they have defined evil. That there's obvious internal disquet about their new direction should be fairly disqueting to you. Could you point me to the obvious internal disquiet? Is this in reference to Larry Page's supposed "ultimatum"? Because I was under the impression that that was a simple expression of his commitment to his vision for the company, misrepresen…

> Could you point me to the obvious internal disquiet? It was to this [0] article I was referring. I don't think he was misrepresented, but the Larry Page quote was really beside the point. Edit: reworded the paragraphs below for clarity > impending but vaguely characterized misuse of that data. There have already been a number of occasions where either Google's network was compromised [1], a rogue employee has misus…

Let's leave the internal disquiet issue aside for now.

The occasions of Google's data being compromised are notable for being exceptions, I think. Of course you're right that there's always the potential for misuse, and the only way to avoid misuse completely is to never gather data. It's parallel to the argument against big government. It's also parallel to the argument against nuclear power. But in each of these cases it's a matter of cost/benefit and risk analysis. You have to weight the risk and cost of misuse against the benefit of Google having that data. It seems that you're ok with the data Google has collected up til now, but you're worried about more data collection in the future. That's valid, but to me the benefits far outweigh the risk/cost.

Part of this is that Google's structured in such a way that its incentives are to keep the data private (within its own network) because it makes money by having sole proprietorship over it.

I think a salient distinction here is between privacy and confidentiality. Google and Facebook both collect a lot of private information about their users. But Google makes money by keeping that private data confidential, while Facebook makes money by selling the data. These are the companies' respective structural traits. And I think that's what makes Google unique.

> Google has served us so well so far because our interests are aligned; it's the surest way to prevent an abuse of trust in the future and why I'm so concerned about their new strategy.

Can you elaborate as to how this new strategy no longer aligns our interests with Google's?

Re: Google is FUBAR

#264

Post by rodion_89 »

mark_integerdsv wrote: post #247
rodion_89 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily she got me an Arduino for my birthday. But you are correct in that these disambiguations are necessary to a certain extent. I think most users wouldn't react well to it being so prominent (as is with DDG). Perhaps a small sidebar would do well for this, but that would eat into their advertising real-estate.

>Luckily she got me an Arduino for my birthday. She's a keeper! I think we are agreed that one way or another - the coming changes are not 100% great for users across the board. Good for Google perhaps (and that is important) but not good for all users. Looking at the other responses to my comments and other comments on the thread in general the realisation is dawning that maybe my days of searching the web via Googl…

Exactly. I am not much of a Google user, but I understand where they are coming from because I am not part of their target market.

Sometimes it's difficult for us in the technology community to get that most products aren't made for us.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#265

Post by landhar »

rodion_89 wrote: post #229
landhar wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about showing the disambiguation options ? based on wikipedia's disambiguation page ? THAT would be useful

I agree, I prefer those types of results. DuckDuckGo is very good at providing that. A search for "python" returns both a disambiguation section and regular listed results. http://duckduckgo.com/?q=python

Yes, I've been switching back and forth from DuckDuckGo and Google many times over the past three years. At the beginning I liked some of the features that DuckDuckGo had (bangs, disambiguation) but Google would always win on overall web coverage and speed. Lately, I find myself using DuckDuckGo for longer and longer periods of time before stumbling on a query that gives me a better answer in Google. But speed is still an issue (Google has spoiled us on that front).

Re: Google is FUBAR

#266

Post by nbm »

joebadmo wrote: post #263
5l wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Could you point me to the obvious internal disquiet? It was to this [0] article I was referring. I don't think he was misrepresented, but the Larry Page quote was really beside the point. Edit: reworded the paragraphs below for clarity > impending but vaguely characterized misuse of that data. There have already been a number of occasions where either Google's network was compromised [1], a rogue employee has misus…

Let's leave the internal disquiet issue aside for now. The occasions of Google's data being compromised are notable for being exceptions, I think. Of course you're right that there's always the potential for misuse, and the only way to avoid misuse completely is to never gather data. It's parallel to the argument against big government. It's also parallel to the argument against nuclear power. But in each of these ca…

> Google and Facebook both collect a lot of private information about their users. But Google makes money by keeping that private data confidential, while Facebook makes money by selling the data.

Facebook doesn't sell anyone's data. Facebook, like Google, allows advertisers to target advertisements to a particular demographic of users without divulging that user's identity or data.

(I work at Facebook.)

Re: Google is FUBAR

#267

Post by DanBC »

batista wrote: post #261
DanBC wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is great for the general population. You type a bunch of words, and Google will guess what you mean, and will usually return useful results. I don't want that. I don't mind having to work a bit harder to get results, so long as those results are excellent. So, for your example, I want to have to type an extra word (either programming or snakes or herpatology or whatever) to provide the context that Google woul…

I don't want that. I don't mind having to work a bit harder to get results, so long as those results are excellent. So, for your example, I want to have to type an extra word (either programming or snakes or herpatology or whatever) to provide the context that Google would otherwise get from wherever. I'm all anti-Google, but this makes no sense to me. You want to type an extra word? "I don't want to be tracked and s…

This is a subset of "I don't want to be second guessed". I'd happily give up Google's guess of what I want, and I realise that sometimes I'm going to need to type an extra word.

I type slowly, about 60 words a minute. That extra word is an extra second of typing, but it makes the results a lot more useful to me.

There's other advantages. (Maybe these aren't as obvious or real to other people.) Thinking about the words I use forces me to think about the problem, and forces me to think around what I'm doing and why.

Re: Google is FUBAR

#268

Post by tripzilch »

cletus wrote: post #50

Disclaimer: I am a Google engineer. These opinions are my own. Nothing I say in any way represents the company's position, officially or unofficially. That being said, I see all this as much ado about nothing. Privacy policies are complex beasts governed by many regulatory environments. Reducing a huge number of these policies to a handful, announcing it ahead of time and giving you controls over privacy all seem lik…

> On HN you'll find people who are still somehow shocked that you can't out-of-the-box sideload a bootloader onto an iPhone (or whatever).

Not "shocked", but pissed off and outraged.

I really hate this default "I can't believe you're surprised that ..." response whenever someone brings something to their attention that worries or angers them. It's even on Cracked.com's list of most stupid Internet reactions:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-6-stupidest-internet-reactio...

Re: Google is FUBAR

#269

Post by DanBC »

darklajid wrote: post #258
fpgeek wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I am trying to illustrate is that the alleged relevance of a set of results biased on the basis of an individual's profile is incredibly insular (and harmful) if it's there at all. > Boiling it down even further: I believe that search results should reflect what is on the Internet, not just that portion of it that Google deems 'relevant.' And what I'm trying to illustrate is that you're taking an overly simpli…

I'd draw the line somewhere in the past, before all that stuff you mention. Links in Hebrew (I'm in Israel) are unreadable and not helping. I constantly end up with German results polluting my search (maybe because I signed up when I lived in Germany? No idea, it's out of my control). It is a hassle to fight them. It got never better. I gradually noticed a trend of decreasing usefulness of Google search, without any…

/ncr == no country redirect might be helpful.

http://www.google.com/ncr

Re: Google is FUBAR

#270

Post by 5l »

joebadmo wrote: post #263
5l wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Could you point me to the obvious internal disquiet? It was to this [0] article I was referring. I don't think he was misrepresented, but the Larry Page quote was really beside the point. Edit: reworded the paragraphs below for clarity > impending but vaguely characterized misuse of that data. There have already been a number of occasions where either Google's network was compromised [1], a rogue employee has misus…

Let's leave the internal disquiet issue aside for now. The occasions of Google's data being compromised are notable for being exceptions, I think. Of course you're right that there's always the potential for misuse, and the only way to avoid misuse completely is to never gather data. It's parallel to the argument against big government. It's also parallel to the argument against nuclear power. But in each of these ca…

> The occasions of Google's data being compromised are notable for being exceptions

So far, but the risks are only going to get worse. Eventually the value of our data, at least in aggregate, will exceed the costs of defeating Google's security (assuming it's even as good as the money they put into it). And please don't forget, the government can take a peek anytime for free.

> Google makes money by keeping that private data confidential, while Facebook makes money by selling the data

They use it for exactly the same purpose. To sell ads. Neither platform has, or likely ever will, sell our data outright. That is absolutely the last thing I'd be worried about.

Of course, like the government, you don't know who will be in charge tomorrow or what their intentions might be.

> These are the companies' respective structural traits. And I think that's what makes Google unique.

All institutions will try and do terrible things if you set up the wrong incentives.

> Can you elaborate as to how this new strategy no longer aligns our interests with Google

We are paying for this with our privacy. I'm not sure how much clearer I can get. Improvements to Google's index used to cost us nothing. Now they cost us our data. The more data they collect, the more money they will make. That sets their interests squarely against ours; yes, true, we want good search results. We also want the government to arrest all the terrorists. I'm not prepared to live my life as an open book to achieve these results.

> to me the benefits far outweigh the risk/cost.

You've asked me a lot of questions, let me ask you some. What happens when the benefits no longer outweigh the risks but Google tell you sorry, our profiling isn't finished yet. What if through some change in your personal circumstances the data they hold suddenly becomes damaging to you. What will you do if they go too far? Will you know straight away? Will you have time to make a decision? Will you be able to tell them to stop? How will you get Google to delete your data if you want them to leave you alone? Are you expecting the government to step in and help even though they're directly benefiting from all this data collection? Are you perfectly happy that they have access to it all? Would you so willingly hand over the same data to them directly?

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