They Did It: Google Personalizes Search & It Is Not Evil • Hacker News Board

Re: They Did It: Google Personalizes Search & It Is Not Evil

#31

Post by joebadmo » Tue, Jan 10, 2012, 7:47 PM UTC

redthrowaway wrote: post #26

betterth wrote: post #19

"It is not evil". Keep telling yourself that. Google is selling you to the world, and this is just one more way to get you on their site and making money for them.

And? What's evil about advertising? Seriously, I'm surprised to see this kind of comment ranked so highly on HN. Google makes products. Most of them are good, some of them are excellent. In exchange, they show you ads. The alternative is making the user pay. There's nothing wrong with this arrangement; it's the default monetization strategy for a huge number of companies. The core of the argument seems to be that Goo…

Totally agree. "You are the product" is such a reductive, partisan talking point that at this point it's actually a pretty good filter for intellectual honesty and critical thinking.

I wrote a whole blog post about it here: http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/9910020865/you-are-the-produc...

Re: They Did It: Google Personalizes Search & It Is Not Evil

#32

Post by surferbayarea » Tue, Jan 10, 2012, 11:50 PM UTC

The technical definition of "do no evil" was that google search would not promote any single entity based on who they are, rather they would let algorithms and data govern the core ranking. This seems to be the first VIOLATION of this principle. A HACK has been inserted into the core search ranking where if the content belongs to google, it is being given a preferential treatment and higher score. Why should a photo on picasa be more highly ranked than one on flickr? Seems the ranking team is just taking a short-cut by only using the data on google's internal properties in the ranking.. Come on, crawl the rest of the web !! There is interesting content out there..

Re: They Did It: Google Personalizes Search & It Is Not Evil

#33

Post by 2muchcoffeeman » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 2:37 PM UTC

kevinh wrote: post #28

missing_cipher wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you're not paying, you're the product" still applies, I agree.

That's a naive quote. You are the product, yes, but you're also the customer. Google has to appease you to keep you. Without a balance between consumer and advertiser, Google won't make any money.

This is only a valid point if people are aware of what is going on and make an informed choice.

I'd don't think this is true. Consider Internet Explorer. People used it because it was there. Even with better alternatives people used it. It took a fair while to educate users.

People use Google because it's the default search engine. They could get away with having only momentum. Appeasing users would then be unnecessary until a real competitor comes along.

Re: They Did It: Google Personalizes Search & It Is Not Evil

#34

Post by betterth » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 10:52 PM UTC

redthrowaway wrote: post #26

betterth wrote: post #19

"It is not evil". Keep telling yourself that. Google is selling you to the world, and this is just one more way to get you on their site and making money for them.

And? What's evil about advertising? Seriously, I'm surprised to see this kind of comment ranked so highly on HN. Google makes products. Most of them are good, some of them are excellent. In exchange, they show you ads. The alternative is making the user pay. There's nothing wrong with this arrangement; it's the default monetization strategy for a huge number of companies. The core of the argument seems to be that Goo…

I'd rather pay a trivial amount of money for their service than be forced into a global information gathering scheme whose sole point (currently) is effective advertising.

It's frustrating that they've gobbled up some of the best programmers in the world to make some of the best software in the world--

And then enforced the rule that you can't use their software without being spyed on.

Why not let us pay for software?

Call it what you want, I call it evil.