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Mourning Google

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Re: Mourning Google

#371

Post by amadeuspagel »

SadCordDrone wrote: post #330
amadeuspagel wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading is a skill. The more you read, the better you get. The laptop encourages you to surf (and surfing is reading), the phone encourages you to scroll, usually through images and videos. Attention span is a separate issue. I lack the attention span to watch a short youtube video, but I can easily read long essays.

The phone is not that bad for reading. Granted, reading PDFs is harder. But reading webpages is mostly fine. When I started using phones, I didn't have the luxury of high speed internet and multimedia-focused apps. I should probably be thankful for that.

The phone is good for reading, but not good for surfing, which is where the motivation to read comes from.

Re: Mourning Google

#372

Post by Apocryphon »

varjag wrote: post #365
Apocryphon wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People forget how common this cycle reappears in tech. Jobs founded Apple in opposition to IBM culture alongside Wozniak the ultimate hobbyist tinkerer. Musk was lauded for open-sourcing Tesla’s patents, ten years ago. I’m sure even an up-and-coming Microsoft was seen as a “good guy” at the top of the ‘90s. Though some of this was just public posturing, of course.

I’m sure even an up-and-coming Microsoft was seen as a “good guy” at the top of the ‘90s. Uh, about that…

I said at the top of the decade, not at its end.

Re: Mourning Google

#373

Post by k_kelly »

sgu999 wrote: post #200
k_kelly wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s far more 5D chess than that. Search costs nothing to run relative to ad revenue. Microsoft makes each query require 100x the cpu usage because users expect an LLM answer for results. Microsoft’s share of search goes from 1% to 5%. Their cost go up but their sale of ads increases and they get valuable IP. Google loses 5% share of market but its costs go up 100x. Google can no longer finance its other bets like Cl…

Is your point that MS is diversified enough to absorb the losses of eating up Google's share in search even with the now higher costs?

Microsoft can afford to make a less profitable product for search than Google because if Google competes it’s a net win for Microsoft.

AI has many other profitable uses for Microsoft but specifically using it to compete with Google Search seems like a poison pill.

Re: Mourning Google

#374

Post by kmac_ »

renegade-otter wrote: post #110
bigallen wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will be devastated when (hopefully if!) this happens. If I use a standard search engine to look up a question, I typically get endless “okay” results with piles of moneygrabbing shit mixed in. If I ask chatGPT, I get a contextually relevant, straightforward answer that is probably as accurate as anything else I could reasonably find. It’s like a breath of fresh air

Sure, but for now . ChatGPT results will also be enshitified, and since the cycle of everything is much faster now, it will take much less than 20 years.

Nah, the fruit hangs very low here, I bet that fine-tuning with ads is in MS and Google backlogs already. Try to ad block that.

Re: Mourning Google

#375

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

Apocryphon wrote: post #372
varjag wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure even an up-and-coming Microsoft was seen as a “good guy” at the top of the ‘90s. Uh, about that…

I said at the top of the decade, not at its end.

The letter to hackers ("hobbyists") was actually from 1976:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists

Microsoft were never the good guys, not in the 80s, not in the 90s, not ever.

Re: Mourning Google

#376

Post by smugglerFlynn »

herval wrote: post #37

> "Larry and Sergey were smart guys who recognized they didn’t know shit about corporateness and quickly got into a pattern of hiring and empowering psychotic pricks who were presumably “good at business”. Not gonna talk about some of the things I saw because these people are wealthy and litigious." Big Tech in a nutshell

[flagged]

Re: Mourning Google

#377

Post by Apocryphon »

samirillian wrote: post #363
_bohm wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cultural marxists I think maybe you mean just "Marxists". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th... To your question, I do think the term is becoming heavily watered down as I see it being used frequently by people who clearly lack the context on Marxist thought to be able to use it with it's original meaning. More often, when people use the term, I infer the sentiment that the "capitalism" we…

Actually I meant Western marxists https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Marxism > Less concerned with economic analysis than earlier schools of Marxist thought, Western Marxism placed greater emphasis on the study of the cultural trends of capitalist society, deploying the more philosophical and subjective aspects of Marxism, and incorporating non-Marxist approaches to investigating culture and historical developme…

Maybe cultural theorist Marxist or cultural critique Marxist would be clearer. I hadn't heard of those thinkers you mentioned but everyone is at least faintly familiar with Žižek's shtick.

fwiw, "late stage capitalism" feels to be a phrase that's been around as popular parlance since at least the mid-2010s. It's even brought up in the Wikipedia article for the term:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_capitalism#Modern_usage_o...

It's cliche by now. They should probably move on to a new buzzword. Actually, in tech, it does exist: enshittification is a good replacement as any.

Re: Mourning Google

#378

Post by dtdynasty »

eitland wrote: post #359
wuschel wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I can’t really objectively comment on the development of the quality of search result over time, one is for sure: the amount of data Google has to process and the amount attempts to influence beforementioned search results have grown a couple of orders of magnitude since Google’s creation.

Yes. But 1. so has their processing power 2. lots of the problem (first page of results filled with ads that looks like content, including spam in the results and not giving us a block option) are not related to scale 3. Smaller (search.marginalia.nu) and larger (kagi.com) competitors keep demonstrating that it is possible to implement doublequotes correctly and not include results I didn't ask for - even in 2024.

For 2 it is related to scale. Because of their scale Google is targeted by spammers the most. The smaller searches don't need to fight off bad content because it's not targeting their specific algorithms.

Re: Mourning Google

#379

Post by Apocryphon »

wharvle wrote: post #283
hello_computer wrote: post #75

Zero self-awareness. Larry and Sergey "empower(ed) psychotic pricks" because they are psychotic pricks. Look up how Larry talked to his marketing team in the early days, or his dalliances with subordinates (i.e. Melissa). Birds of a feather. Like attracts like. "Late Capitalism" is just polisci brain-damage. The comic books are more on-point: > You Either Die a Hero or Live Long Enough to See Yourself Become the Vill…

> “Late Capitalism" is just polisci brain-damage. I dislike that term, but do think post-war optimization of management and finance have built toward… something, which we are now in, which is different from how things were earlier in this process (50s, 60s, at least part of the 70s) and certainly different from pre-war American capitalism. Calling it “late” seems silly though.

The financialization of everything
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