Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust • Hacker News Board

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#291

Post by dleslie » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 3:10 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #143

dleslie wrote: post #23

While looking at the tables of good versus bad phrasing I couldn't shake the feeling that I was reading something not so dissimilar to how leaders of organized crime historically avoided prosecution. By not naming the crime, by speaking about it indirectly and with softer language, they hoped to invigorate doubt in a hypothetical jury. It's a method of avoiding responsibility oft credited to Henry II, who stated off-…

Yeah, but that isn't even a hint of a problem. It would be like observing that Google and the mafia also both use accounting principles to organise their finances. These large companies are going to be involved in lawsuits, no matter what. Their written communications are going to be trawled through, more than likely. Everyone in the company would have to be a bit simple for there not to be some preparations to defen…

If the behaviour doesn't warrant prosecution then there would be no need for careful use of language to conceal it.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#292

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 3:29 PM UTC

_nalply wrote: post #239

dredmorbius wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is generally typical of online content as a whole given SEO gaming and commercialisation. DDG's bang searches and the ability to fluidly target searches to specific sites with less typing and fewer hops is a key differentiator. The most relevant quality content tends to come from published rather than online sources, or by going direct to source. The Web has been a mistake. That said, Google's SERP page c…

> The Web has been a mistake. In hindsight, what would have been better?

That's a good question. I'm not sure I have a good answer.

I'm also not sure that djin can be rebottled. The history of media advances has been that they tend to progress and proceed, and human culture changes around them, they do rather less adapting to human culture.

(I've become aware in the past five years or so of the study of media and its impacts on society as a whole. Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change only hints at the full breadth, but is one of the major works on the topic. She draws heavily on Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy (literally: we live in the universe Johannes Gutenberg created), and there are numerous others who explore this, notably Adam Curtis and Neil Postman. Again, the Web, algorithmic social media, and mobile computing each bring their own twist. Again, this isn't the first time media's transformed society. I'd argue that every advance, from speech on up, has. The changes can be tremendous and catastrophic --- to the previously existing order --- as with the printing press and the Reformation and Hundred Years War.)

One useful approach is to look at each of what were touted as the Web's strengths, and consider them from the perspective of "what could possibly go wrong". Several principles of the sociologist Robert K. Merton are helpful here: overt vs. covert functions and phenomena, unintended consequences, and possibly self-fullfilling prophecies.

It's not clear to me what boundaries can be established for the Web, or what the consequences of a failure to establish those might be. Either case the future appears bleak.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#293

Post by sidlls » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 3:33 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #205

lugged wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Las I checked judges don't love it when you try to be clever or cute.

q: why do you ask people to use the word area instead of market? a: Because imprecise language clouds thinking and makes things less intelligible, and Google is a company that makes its money from intelligence. People have been incorrectly referring to areas as markets, in order to better communicate we laid down guidelines. We often lay down guidelines about corporate communications to heighten their efficiency, as…

You're suggesting that an answer which explicitly makes "area" a synonym for "market" is a defense against the suggestion that using "area" is an attempt to obfuscate that they're really referring to "market". That, uh, doesn't add up.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#294

Post by gambler » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 3:42 PM UTC

slownews45 wrote: post #175

kens wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 15 years ago, IBM was far from being a monopoly I think some historical background is necessary here. Nowadays IBM isn't a monopoly but during the 20th century, IBM was more or less a monopoly. IBM's antitrust problems go back to their 1936 consent decree and 1956 consent decree. IBM was subject to a huge antitrust case that went on from 1969 to 1982 as well as many other antitrust lawsuits. The first point is that…

No question that anti-trust is currently pretty much incoherent. One frustration is that it has morphed from things around consumer harm to a new focus on harm to other ... businesses. Google downranks some crappy content farm / shopping aggregator - bam - antitrust complaint. Yes, it hurt that business and so helps google shopping - but no one asks - do users like these crap content farms? Same with google finance -…

How would a consumer know that they are "harmed" by Google's shenanigans when those shenanigans involve deleting the competition before it gets the chance to compete? This sounds like a catch 22 type of definition of monopoly. Businesses need competition for the free market to work properly.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#295

Post by lelanthran » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 4:03 PM UTC

endominus wrote: post #270

lelanthran wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't get my hopes up. The number of times I've seen people, even here, equate legality and morality is frightening. I have literally never seen anyone here argue that "murder and genocide isn't morally wrong if it is legally right". Are you sure you aren't equivocating "I don't support $FOO political position" with "I support murder and genocide"? Because I have seen a number of people argue that some aspect…

No, I wasn't even thinking of political positions. I'm not trying to dog-whistle around red-tribe/blue-tribe signaling, I actually mean what I said. I was in a comment thread some time ago about the ethics of self-driving cars. Another user believed that they should base the decisions of who to save on the cultural mores, history, and laws of the region where they are sold. On the one hand, it's hard to see a busines…

My apologies, I read your comment more uncharitably than you intended.

> Another user believed that they should base the decisions of who to save on the cultural mores, history, and laws of the region where they are sold.

This brings up a different issue: the product will then be considered amoral in the particular region that it is deployed in. That's the problem with using "morals" as a yardstick - it's too subjective because every culture has their own set of morals, and these morals change over time anyway.

For a product sold in multiple regions, it makes sense to follow the cultural mores of that region. If you don't like their morals, don't do business with them.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#296

Post by mda » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

rnhmjoj wrote: post #256

mda wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I almost never get useful results out of a web search" This I find impossible to believe. So you basically don't get any useful results for 80-90% of your searches? I wish you could give some examples.

Ok, here's a few real example where I had only partial (but 100% correct) information had a hard time finding the right answer: 1. There's a shell (program) which feature a built-in file manager inspider by ranger, I forgot its name: try to find it. Answer: [1] 2. There's a particular gas that can (temporarily) kill a smartphone, but you forgot which. Find the article about this. Answer: [2] 3. There's a blog post (w…

1. Only finds it if something in the line of "programming language and interactive shell with built-in file manager" for less, it indeed misses.

2. "(this) gas causes smartphones to temporarily deactivate" second result

3 "blog post ipv6 was supposed to replace MAC adresses" 3rd result

In some cases some slight change in the wording changes the ranking drastically. However, I am not sure "The old good google" would find these at all honestly.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#297

Post by gumby » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 5:13 PM UTC

rossjudson wrote: post #192

delaynomore wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This policy makes very little sense. Does Google IT also purge every message he responded to from all corporate managed mailboxes?

I work at Google and my messages are purged before I even send them. This avoids so many problems!

Truly Google lives in the future the rest of us will catch up with.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#298

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 9:50 PM UTC

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #161

tytso wrote: post #25

When I was at IBM 15 years ago, IBM was far from being a monopoly, since there were plenty of competitors in the hardware space (HP, Sun, Dell, etc) and in the software space (Oracle, SAP, etc.) and in the Services space (Accenture, PwC, KPMG, etc.) employees still had to complete annual legal training that was very similar to what was described in the post. Any large company with half-way competent legal counsel is…

Here's Adam Curtis' brief history of Google's relationship to "the customer" (false label: advertisers are the customers, not search engine users) 1998 Idealism. "I think I want to make the world a better place." https://youtu.be/55jSx4pRZqI?t=1789s 2000 Disaster and desperation. VCs tell SB what Google must do. https://youtu.be/55jSx4pRZqI?t=2249s

"The only thing in my head is a conviction that our fascination with modern technology and the internet may go very quickly. It doesn't mean the internet will disappear - but it will just become suddenly seen as mundane. And not threatening. And quite a lot of it a bit of a con." - Adam Curtis

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#299

Post by warmfuzzykitten » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 4:00 AM UTC

I have a problem getting to his point when the examples he shows at the start are so unlike what I see when I enter the same search phrases.

"COVID-19 trends in Palm Beach" didn't bring up any hotel listings. Instead I get statistics, cases, and a map of cases from the New York Times, and after that a list of ordinary links.

"the walking dead season 11" showed an ad from AMCPlus.com, which is fairly understandable since it's totally on point, followed by regular links, the first to wikipedia.

I know that what individuals see is customized to some extent, but I can't imagine what sort of search history he has that would get the results he shows.

If his examples are not typical, it seems possible his premise is flawed.

Re: Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust

#300

Post by couchridr » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 4:02 AM UTC

lozenge wrote: post #246

slownews45 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the complaints against apple have focused on things they do that at least too me seem helpful and a positive part of my experience with apple. I feel MUCH more comfortable spending money via apple then I do almost anywhere else. Software on the web - endless issues buying / refunding / renewing. And if I don't like apple (which only has like 15% market share) I can switch to any number of android phones. It's jus…

But there's a lot that would help consumers that Apple conspicuously don't do. It took them ages to deal with kids making unauthorised in app purchases and AFAIK they still haven't dealt with scam apps and scam subscriptions ($150/year QR code scanning app). Consumers would appreciate PWAs but it doesn't suit Apple's corporate strategy so they are poorly supported. You can't pay through the Netflix or Kindle app due…

I might add, Apple could kill the market for stolen iPhones (by preventing a phone from working when they get a bona ride police report) but they don’t.