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Google search's death by a thousand cuts

matt-rickard.com

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Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#301

Post by creato »

_v7gu wrote: post #145
creato wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were fined 2.4 billion euros for downranking a shitty SEO spam operation: https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/07/google-shopping-lawsuit/am... . How many of those thousand domains will result in billion dollar fines?

Wow, that is not what that article is saying at all.

I'm aware, but that's not the point. I went to that company's website around the time that case was in the news, and 100% agreed with google downranking it.

The point is, downranking decisions by google have a non-trivial chance of being litigated in court, and at that point, I doubt that the decision will actually be made on the merits of the particular site. A sympathetic website owner with a sympathetic regulator is frequently going to win against google, regardless of how shady the site actually is.

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#302

Post by hakfoo »

praptak wrote: post #181
llamaLord wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't remember exactly where I saw it, but last number I saw said that Google makes ~$12 a year per user. Which begs the question... why have they not atleast tried a "Google Premium". Fuck it, I'd pay $15 a year to have a Google search that puts as much effort into finding me the shit I actually want as Google does today in serving me BS ads I never pay attention to.

First thought is that it's the most profitable users who would choose adless. The ads industry would not like their reach to be limited to those not paying for premium search.

I always wanted to see just a "price transparency" aspect.

Tell me exactly how much the advertiser paid for his placement, and that's a hugely important signal here.

If I'm searching for weird hobby parts, even though it's a high purchase intent query, they're probably paying pennies per click.

But if you start searching, say, financial stuff and the ad placement figures start showing multiple dollars per click, it's a warning "these people are willing to spend THIS MUCH MONEY to present a message to you, this probably means there's something sketchy involved."

I know, for example, anything pertaining to insurance and financial products is highly likely to turn into a farm of cross-selling and personal-information harvesting, because the cost per acquisition is so high and the tendency for everyone to sell the information to everyone else is so great.

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#303

Post by mdekkers »

TX81Z wrote: post #36
SoftTalker wrote: post #17

I use DuckDuckGo now almost exclusively for search. It's the default in all my browsers. A few years ago Google still did better for some searches but now I don't feel that to be the case.

It’s a skinned version of Bing and Microsoft has forbade them from introducing any chat-based functionality. Hence their little demo going away quickly and quietly. I also use it, but if Bing starts to make real gains and Microsoft thinks more DDG users will go to Bing than Google if they kill DDG, they will kill DDG. They’ve been playing a very risky game for a long time.

Have a look at Kagi

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#304

Post by autoexec »

joelanman wrote: post #178
hooby wrote: post #173

I feel that Google search has been slowly dying for many years now. Where in the past I could find documentation, forum-posts, wikis - concise information - these days I find SEO-optimised marketing fluff, link-farms, clickbait, long-form articles with thousands of words that ultimately say nothing, political tirades that don't make sense for any non-U.S.-citizen, and ads - tons and tons of ads. It would seem that it…

They very much killed the golden goose. It's a real failure to think in terms of systems. Google relies on a healthy open web, yet as arguably the biggest single influencer of the web it has completely failed to maintain that let alone improve it.

> They very much killed the golden goose

I suspect that thanks to android phones collecting all of our offline data, and chrome collecting everyone's browsing history, Google no longer needs our web searches to collect the most intimate details of our lives which is why they aren't interested in spending time and money on their search product. In fact, the more useless google search is the more google can make companies pay for ads placed at the top of listings because if those companies don't pay up, their customers may struggle to find their site at all through all the spam.

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#305

Post by llamaLord »

StrictDabbler wrote: post #222
hooby wrote: post #173

I feel that Google search has been slowly dying for many years now. Where in the past I could find documentation, forum-posts, wikis - concise information - these days I find SEO-optimised marketing fluff, link-farms, clickbait, long-form articles with thousands of words that ultimately say nothing, political tirades that don't make sense for any non-U.S.-citizen, and ads - tons and tons of ads. It would seem that it…

The other day I searched for "canned cabbage soup". The mobile website locked into a mode I've never seen before. It would only provide blogspamish recipes for canning your own cabbage soup linked through the tiled suggestion interface. Not a single text-style link was returned and none of the results were pre-canned soups. I scanned though page after page without getting anything else. Oddly, when I searched "canned…

> Why is there a "provide blogspam" mode?

Because blogspam sites all implement Google Adwords for monetisation, meaning Google can now show you 30 ads instead of just 3 at the top of the search result.

Remember, Googles customers are the advertisers and the site-owners implementing Google Adwords, not you.

You're the product being sold.

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#306

Post by liveoneggs »

dmvdoug wrote: post #228
LaundroMat wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what Brin and Page said in the paper where they presented Google... "[W]e expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers" and "[W]e believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm." Both from The An…

have they ever addressed this in later years? Like, what was their justification for Google becoming the AdMonster it did?

Yes but you can't hear them because they are on yachts

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#307

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

Semaphor wrote: post #300
traverseda wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than 1.5 cents per search is a lot, they're pricing model really discourages me from making them my default search engine. A $10 unlimited search would be more justifiable. $15 would be stretching it. If I'm not on a functionally unlimited unlimited plan (rate limiting is fine if it's reasonable) then I have to think about it every time I search. Should I really be searching here or should I be using the search…

There is Ultimate which is not capped. That seems to be what you want? Personally, my record was below 900 searches and usually below 800, so the 1000 searches (technically 1500 because early adopter) are absolutely fine for me.

Kagi ultimate seems to be multiple times the price that poster mentioned they thought reasonable for unlimited search

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#308

Post by Semaphor »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #307
Semaphor wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is Ultimate which is not capped. That seems to be what you want? Personally, my record was below 900 searches and usually below 800, so the 1000 searches (technically 1500 because early adopter) are absolutely fine for me.

Kagi ultimate seems to be multiple times the price that poster mentioned they thought reasonable for unlimited search

Sometimes reading is hard, thanks.

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#309

Post by freediver »

joelanman wrote: post #178
hooby wrote: post #173

I feel that Google search has been slowly dying for many years now. Where in the past I could find documentation, forum-posts, wikis - concise information - these days I find SEO-optimised marketing fluff, link-farms, clickbait, long-form articles with thousands of words that ultimately say nothing, political tirades that don't make sense for any non-U.S.-citizen, and ads - tons and tons of ads. It would seem that it…

They very much killed the golden goose. It's a real failure to think in terms of systems. Google relies on a healthy open web, yet as arguably the biggest single influencer of the web it has completely failed to maintain that let alone improve it.

This is basically the premise of "The Age of PageRank is Over" blog post that is now sort of a Kagi manifesto.

https://blog.kagi.com/age-pagerank-over

Re: Google search's death by a thousand cuts

#310

Post by pfannkuchen »

8note wrote: post #270
sombremesa wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bingo. Getting it into production is a non-concern for non-entities with no reputation, but Google has a lot more to lose. The big guys watch and wait, and use their sizeable wallets when the time comes. I have no doubts that Apple is going to eat Meta's lunch soon, for example — a lunch Meta didn't even realize was there, for all their innovation and go-to-market.

Google puts all kinds of things into production, then takes them down again in a year. The reputation is already that google puts out experiments

They are terrified of another “people labeled as gorillas” incident. Not of later canceling the product, they don’t care about that.
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