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Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

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Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#291
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they didn't - hence the ads

It's a very common story in industry. You start nimble, and disrupt bloated platforms. Then, as you grow, pressure grows and you also bloat. Then new company comes that brings nimble product and disrupt you. Search, TV->internet video, newspapers->internet - all of them go through those cycles.

"Always two there are, the disrupted and the disruptor."

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#292
It becomes even sadder when Google caters to political propaganda of any kind, from any party or country, if the price is right. I wish Google realized how much greater and more beneficial the product and company are to the people who use them than all of that. I am not naïve -I understand they need to profit- but perhaps they are focusing on short term gains while introducing this poor user experience, which will eventually lead to major losses.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#293
post #249

Can anyone reproduce this? When I search "Midjourney", I get an ad for Midjourney (from Midjourney), followed by Midjourney, the site. After that, I get the Midjourney Discord, the Midjourney subreddit, the Midjourney Wikipedia page, and then (inexplicably), another Midjourney ad. That seems about as good as it could be. Edit: I guess I should say that I do agree that the quality of Google Search is pretty poor these…

Seriously, all I get is Midjourney links and links to midjourney official accounts on a number of other platforms

Going incognito, the first link is a sponsored ad for... midjourney

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#294
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very common story in industry. You start nimble, and disrupt bloated platforms. Then, as you grow, pressure grows and you also bloat. Then new company comes that brings nimble product and disrupt you. Search, TV->internet video, newspapers->internet - all of them go through those cycles.

Used to be. Now the megacorp just buys the disrupting platform

Most revolutions are merely power transfers.

But sometimes the incumbent crushes the revolutionary.

And sometimes the incumbent hires or bribes the revolutionary.

And sometimes the incumbent guts the revolutionary and wears his face as a mask.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#295
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they didn't - hence the ads

It's a very common story in industry. You start nimble, and disrupt bloated platforms. Then, as you grow, pressure grows and you also bloat. Then new company comes that brings nimble product and disrupt you. Search, TV->internet video, newspapers->internet - all of them go through those cycles.

I've already grown to hate the very words "nimble" and "disrupt".

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#297

When I search for "midjourney" without an adblocker a bunch of times, I'm getting: - No ads, with correct midjourney.com as the top result, about half the time - A legit ad for midjourney.com with the title "Your Imagination, Unlocked", the other half the time. It's the only ad, and the correct midjourney.com is also still directly below it as the first organic result So both seem fine for me. I've never seen ads on…

Were you logged in or logged out when you ran the searches?

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#298
Probably not the first comment to this end, but I have been using Kagi for the last few months and it’s good. Past attempts to use other search engines didn’t last long because of search quality but Kagi is good enough as long as I don’t expect local results, which is a fine tradeoff.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#299
post #206

Meanwhile, over on Kagi: https://cln.sh/LbZ8VBbKzjyzKchNC4hS

I love Kagi, been using it for over a year now. Sadly I haven’t been able to get anyone else on board, even with gift subs.

I tried for a while but found too much friction getting it all working on my phone (iOS). It wasn’t TOO crazy—I just think Apple didn’t take into account that a search engine might require authentication. Though maybe it’s easier now—I should give it another look.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But like always they didn't stop once they were a bit profitable with a few ads, instead they got greedier and greedier and made their product worse once they captured most of the market, I have wonder if there can exist some variant of capitalism that punishes becoming a bit too greedy, like a soft ceiling (tied to the minimum wage) over which most of the profits go to taxes, and a hard one where all profits over th…

> instead they got greedier and greedier and made their product worse once they captured most of the market I wouldn't necessarily put it that way because not Google, nor any company, has moral capacity. They don't have souls. What they do have are incentive structures, and those flip when the stock goes public. Pre-IPO: the board is mostly founders and VCs holding paper wealth. Their shares aren't liquid, so the onl…

In the old days, companies were valued on their expected dividend. Share prices didn't move that much, and trading shares took time and had fees attached. You could speculate on share price moves, and people did, but the primary source of income from holding shares was dividends.

Now it's the other way around. The primary source of gains from owing shares is speculation on the share price. Dividends are mostly ignored.

The result of this is that share prices move not on "how well is the company likely to do?" but on "what do we think the share price will do in the next couple of months (at most) [0]?". It all becomes hype and rumour and speculation. Shareholders only care about the price, so boards are incentivised to only care about the price. And so on down. Generating hype about what the company is going to do becomes more important than actually doing it (I exaggerate, but not by much). This then leads to the short-term-ism that we see, and the hot potato effect.

I think the answer would be to tax speculative profits. If you sell something for more than you bought it for, the government takes a cut. Specifically remove this from income tax calculations, because they have way too many loopholes, and make it more like VAT/GST; a tax payable at the point of the transaction. This would reduce the profits from speculation, and hopefully move the emphasis back onto dividends and longer-term thinking.

[0] and obviously, for some privileged traders, the next couple of milliseconds

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