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The world needs more search engines

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Re: The world needs more search engines

#381

Post by unlinked_dll »

kbyatnal wrote: post #262

There needs to be a new search engine focused on the niche of people who hate the current ad spam/SEO results that Google currently returns. A query like "best headphones" returns results like "The Best Headphones for 2019 | PCMag.com". They've clearly optimized for the mass user base, since the average person is probably fine with a result like that. But I'm willing to bet no one on HN would ever click a link like t…

I don't even mind "best widget" searches coming up with blogspam and the odd forum post.

What bothers me is searching for a specific product and having Google promote a competing product to the top search result (or as a "featured" listing that looks like a normal search result).

Re: The world needs more search engines

#382

Post by buboard »

arrosenberg wrote: post #112

How do you design regulation that holds the giants accountable, doesn't impair smaller companies' ability to enter/innovate in the space, and isn't quickly corruptible by the (well-resourced) companies you are trying to control? We're better served by breaking them up and enforcing and strengthening the pro-competition laws on the books. The government has a pretty mixed record with regulating industry, and a far mor…

> breaking them up and enforcing and strengthening the pro-competition laws on the books.

So, suppose Google Search is broken away from alphabet. What changed?

I can understand that argument about Youtube (which is losing money and would probably fail), but google search will keep being dominant and their ad revenue won't change significantly.

Re: The world needs more search engines

#383

Post by icotyl »

arrosenberg wrote: post #195
icotyl wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the corporate abuse here that necessitates a breakup?

Google/Facebook/Amazon have been acting anti-competitively for quite a while. Vertical integration, concentrating industry through M&A, shady data practices. A democratic country has an interest in ensuring that our labor and goods markets also remain open, competitive, and democratic in nature. We've made this choice as a country repeatedly throughout our history, and it's time to do it again.

Many companies across many industries vertically integrate. Should they all be broken up?

“Shady data practices” is hand-wavey and non-specific. What do you mean? Many companies today (again, across All industries) have had issues with keeping user data secure, selling it to untrustworthy third parties, not giving users transparency or controls in what information is shared, etc. Google’s track record in these areas is far better than most. How does this necessitate a breakup?

Concentrating industry through M&A is a legitimate issue, in my opinion, but it’s also probably the easiest to regulate.

Our tech companies are the most competitive in the world, bar none. I’m not sure that cutting them off at the knees will help with that. ”We did it before,” isn’t a convincing argument that we should do it now, under much different circumstances.

Re: The world needs more search engines

#384

Post by [deleted] »

mikl wrote: post #151
xixixao wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest problem is: How do you break up a software system? I understand how you break up a company that mines ore, produces steel, builds railways, runs transportation - those are all separable ventures that can negotiate contracts almost as easily as when they had a single owner. But the tech giants run a single system: Amazon in the delivery, FB in the social graph (DB), Google in the knowledge graph. Those woul…

Split the search from Adsense. Allow the search company to only sell ads on its own properties so they can’t reestablish ad-hegemony. For good measure, ban them from making their own browser.

[deleted]

Re: The world needs more search engines

#385

Post by solso »

bko wrote: post #73

Google's dominance is almost entirely due to the fact that its by far the best at search. I use ddg, but I use google search via !g about 25-50% of the time after a failed attempts. And 9 times out of 10 Google gives me exactly what I'm looking for. For instance: "the actor that plays the news guy in spiderman" ddg: Tom Holland (side bar) Spider-Man Homecoming (imdb) Tom Holland (wiki) Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Ver…

The claim:

"Google's dominance is almost entirely due to the fact that its by far the best at search."

is, and I'm sorry to say, a make-believe

Google's quality is better than anyone else, that is a fact. Let's go to the point. [[I work on Cliqz, and in search]]

Do you know how much Google pays apple to be the default search engine?

According to you, nothing, because people will go to Google because it's the best.

Well, it turns out that last year was more than 9 Billion (with a B). Quite a lot of money poorly spend, someone should really get fired :-)

Re: The world needs more search engines

#386

Post by JaRail »

meerita wrote: post #5

I'm more than happy with DuckDuckGo. I would love more specialized search engines. Back in the day I've used several search engines depending the task i needed to perform, from Altavista to Yahoo to Google.

I try to use DDG as my default but it's so awful at knowledge-graph questions. I find myself using !g for knowledge queries before even attempting it.

An example would be something like "Rick and Morty episodes." I know google will give me a list with recent/upcoming episode names and air dates for pretty much any show. DDG will link me wikipedia and fan wikis. I make a " episodes" query anytime I want to know when the next episode of something is released.

DDG's knowledge graph (and/or query parsing) is just so limited I skip it anytime I think google will be able to produce the answer directly. Similarly, there are things I'm confident asking a voice assistant, and there are things I won't even bother trying. If it's something I'd ask an assistant, I'm skipping DDG.

Re: The world needs more search engines

#388

Post by [deleted] »

booleandilemma wrote: post #175
xixixao wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest problem is: How do you break up a software system? I understand how you break up a company that mines ore, produces steel, builds railways, runs transportation - those are all separable ventures that can negotiate contracts almost as easily as when they had a single owner. But the tech giants run a single system: Amazon in the delivery, FB in the social graph (DB), Google in the knowledge graph. Those woul…

Just to continue picking on Google: Google has: - Android OS - Nest - Search - Advertising - Chromebooks - Pixel - YouTube - Google Cloud There are clear lines where they could be broken up. I’m not saying they should be broken up.

[deleted]

Re: The world needs more search engines

#389

Post by scarface74 »

saagarjha wrote: post #286
Mirioron wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google can keep Search, but Ads, Doubleclick, Analytics, Waze, GCP, Google Home - all of that needs to be broken up. > Some of the resulting businesses may have to update their model or may not remain profitable, but historically break-ups have resulted in an increase in value for the new businesses. All of this teaches one lesson: be more like Apple. Treat your customers poorly and massively overcharge them. Make…

> All of this teaches one lesson: be more like Apple. Treat your customers poorly and massively overcharge them. Make sure you are never the biggest in your field. Essentially, don't offer products that are too good for the price. You’re wrong on both counts: Apple has its own share of potentially monopolistic behavior, and there are billions of people worldwide who disagree with you on how the company treats them.

So Apple is a “monopoly” over what exactly?

Re: The world needs more search engines

#390

Post by Nextgrid »

jefftk wrote: post #258
wolco wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

google records: ip address, browser fingerprinting. Try visiting from tor

For spam / bot / fraud detection, yes. For ad targeting, no.

Source?

It’s in their best interests to also use it for ad targeting (in a plausibly deniable way so they don’t get in trouble).

We’ve seen them using dark patterns to coerce users into opting into more data collection, and another advertising company got caught using phone numbers for ad purposes even if they originally promised to only use them for 2FA, so why should we trust them this time?

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