These guys warned us about this sort of thing.
http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf
Appendix A. Page 18.
Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image
341–350 of 740 posts
Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image
#342It is a business model problem, not Google’s problem. When it is easy to stand out by paying money, it will always become trash
Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image
#343If I may offer a devil's advocate perspective. I just googled Toyota Highlander (my car) and the ad in the search results is "please consider the Honda Pilot." Now it's unlikely that I am shopping for a midsized SUV and am not aware of the major competitors, but squinting that away for a second - if I am searching for a car I think I want and Google informs me of a perfectly viable alternative that might be cheaper o…
> If I may offer a devil's advocate perspective.
The devil doesn't need advocates. https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3145446/the-devil-doesnt-ne...
There are clear and obvious ways to show advertisements without making those advertisements look like top search results. You know this. Google knows this. There's no reason for anyone to pretend otherwise.
Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even when they first turned on ads, it was arguably a net win. I worked AdWords tech-support 2005-2008, and sat in on the “Ads Quality” core team meeting. They basically had this big money dial, and rather than crank it to 11, they were fiercely protective of the core user experience. They kept ads mostly to the side (unobtrusive), only served them on queries where there was a high probability of commercial intent, a…
Wasn’t that the era where all the big money ads were for strange diseases?
“Mesothelioma” had a $50+ cost-per-click for winning the ad auction.
Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image
#345Imagine seeing ads.
Install an ad blocker.
Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image
#346Like many of you, I serve as IT support for family. Some of those family are beginning to slip cognitively, so I'd like to say: Fk google for doing this. You are confusing my relatives who cannot tell the difference between your ad-spam and actual links, and it is not an exaggeration to say that you are now taking advantage of old people. I'm trying to install adblockers (uBlock) and move them over to chatgpt when po…
In hindsight, we should have known this would happen eventually. At this point, we have to be actively be against free services. Every time its just a ticking time bomb. There's literally no incentive for them to be an actual good service, just good enough that you tolerate it and not consider other options, but shit enough that they can extract value out of you.
> At this point, we have to be actively be against free services.
Nah, GCC is free, Linux is free, Debian is free. What we need to be against is free stuff provided by for-profit entities, because the love of money is the root of all evil.
Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image
#347I searched on my work browser, on my personal browser, on the phone (mobile + desktop page) and in all cases I use the link to midjourney.com first.
The spirit of the question I can subscribe to though: too many ads on top of the results these days.
Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image
#348Can 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…
Wondering if OP has malware that’s injecting results into the search.
Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image
#349Like many of you, I serve as IT support for family. Some of those family are beginning to slip cognitively, so I'd like to say: Fk google for doing this. You are confusing my relatives who cannot tell the difference between your ad-spam and actual links, and it is not an exaggeration to say that you are now taking advantage of old people. I'm trying to install adblockers (uBlock) and move them over to chatgpt when po…
Creat your own family yahoo — a website you maintain that has links to the websites they commonly use like mail and bank. Set as home page and new tab page. It’s a slight security risk since it shows where you have accounts. If you are savvy, build your own search that just passes it to an LLM and returns as page.
Maybe that’s business opportunity for some to create and manage trusted personal portals for family members.
Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image
#350Weird, I don't see those sponsored links. Maybe because I use ublock like a normal person.