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Google - Our History in Depth

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Re: Google - Our History in Depth

#31
post #2

Wow! Is this new, or has it been out for a while? Just finished reading Steven Levy's book on Google - amazing read and insight into Google's history.

This has been out for a while.

I was consulting it back in March 2013 for details I could use for my http://gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns so I know it goes at least that far back.

But you can also punch it into the Internet Archive (http://web.archive.org/web/20120401000000*/http://www.google...) and see that it goes back at least to March 2012. As it happens, as part of the previous research I know that a lot of Google content moves around various URLs without redirects, so between that and how the first IA version is comprehensive, I strongly suspected that it was much older than March 2012; one useful trick for finding the original URL is to look for quotes of the page on other websites which point at a different URL. In this case, if you quote the bit starting with "Larry Page and Sergey Brin meet at Stanford...." (the first entry) and you search in Google with a date-limit of 1995-2010 (in the 'Search Tools' option), you can see hits dated from 2005, 2008, & 2009. The 2005 would be best, but it's some sort of spammy junk, so I try another hit, and it links to 'http://www.google.com/corporate/timeline/#start' which is quite different. That takes me back to August 2008: http://web.archive.org/web/20080401000000*/http://www.google... We can't search for this because it's broken but it tells us that we can narrow our timerange even more, to early 2008. Another hit includes a 'trackback' link to another Google URL, which I duly load up: http://web.archive.org/web/20020223143331/http://www.google.... Useless, since it's not the timeline - but notice the sidebar! 'Timline', bingo. Now we can go all the way back to December 2001: http://web.archive.org/web/20011213165211/http://www.google....

So, this page was started at least as early as December 2001.

Re: Google - Our History in Depth

#32
post #25

I get this page in Dutch. I didn't ask for it and I can't change it. In fact, I'm logged in with an account which only has one language preference set (English), which Google happily ignores whenever it feels like. And it would be merely annoying if it only affected the interface language, but it changes features, search results and in this case the entire content. Which makes it pretty much impossible to participate…

Try adding ?hl=en to the URL. A similar situation happened to my wife after visiting Germany, we had to edit her cookies and clear the "hl" parameter (IIRC) because various random Google sites were entirely in German.

"Try adding ?hl=en to the URL"

How about suing a new fucking search engine, DDG or Bing?!!! Do this for that, that for that and we'll need a college degree on Google searching. I travel so my searches used to automatically transfer to google.cctld. No thanks!

Re: Google - Our History in Depth

#33
post #30
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only browsers sent some kind of message to the server to tell it what languages you'd prefer

They do, and have since at least the mid 90s. But most users don't know how to set this preference, so Google assumes GeoIP is the One Source Of Truth(TM) for language (apart from hl= and being signed in).

I don't think you had your sarcasm filter turned on there.

Re: Google - Our History in Depth

#34
post #26

I get this page in Dutch. I didn't ask for it and I can't change it. In fact, I'm logged in with an account which only has one language preference set (English), which Google happily ignores whenever it feels like. And it would be merely annoying if it only affected the interface language, but it changes features, search results and in this case the entire content. Which makes it pretty much impossible to participate…

This is a huge overreaction.

Did I mention changing features (omitting some, changing the navigation to others) and search results (Stack Overflow tends not to show up in local searches in language xyz) ?

And all this with no language/region switch in sight? Except the one inside the account settings, which Google then randomly ignores?

What would you consider to be the appropriate reaction to such a user experience?

Or just imagine clicking on the link at the top of this threat and ending up on a page called "Onze geschiedenis tot in detail", which contains a truly awful, low quality and barely readable Dutch "translation" with no obvious way of accessing the content people are actually discussing here.

Would this put you in a good mood?

Re: Google - Our History in Depth

#35
post #26

I get this page in Dutch. I didn't ask for it and I can't change it. In fact, I'm logged in with an account which only has one language preference set (English), which Google happily ignores whenever it feels like. And it would be merely annoying if it only affected the interface language, but it changes features, search results and in this case the entire content. Which makes it pretty much impossible to participate…

This is a huge overreaction.

[deleted]

Re: Google - Our History in Depth

#38
post #26

I get this page in Dutch. I didn't ask for it and I can't change it. In fact, I'm logged in with an account which only has one language preference set (English), which Google happily ignores whenever it feels like. And it would be merely annoying if it only affected the interface language, but it changes features, search results and in this case the entire content. Which makes it pretty much impossible to participate…

This is a huge overreaction.

And it's comment #1!

Re: Google - Our History in Depth

#39
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a huge overreaction.

Did I mention changing features (omitting some, changing the navigation to others) and search results (Stack Overflow tends not to show up in local searches in language xyz) ? And all this with no language/region switch in sight? Except the one inside the account settings, which Google then randomly ignores ? What would you consider to be the appropriate reaction to such a user experience? Or just imagine clicking on…

Delete your google cookies then resign in.
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