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Google Reneged on the Monopolistic Bargain

pluralistic.net

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Re: Google Reneged on the Monopolistic Bargain

#41

Post by Topgamer7 »

AJ007 wrote: post #21
tdoggette wrote: post #2

> A company that can't figure out the difference between a scam like Better Homes and Gardens and a rigorous review site like Housefresh should be pouring every spare dime it brings in into fixing this problem. Not buying default search status on every platform so that we never try another search engine: they should be fixing their shit.

Google has sucked for years, and the level of sucking has been covered extensively on hn. The one thing that was a real shock was how much more gas was left in the ad model engine. They've managed to grow substantially over the past couple of years largely by pushing advertisers in to a ROAS model that is clearly optimized to make Google more money: gross almost 2x from 2019 to 2023 -- from $161b to $307b. Net income…

A few weeks ago I bit the bullet and paid for kagi, as a dev it's night and day for finding documentation and relevant, non-spammy results.

Re: Google Reneged on the Monopolistic Bargain

#42

Post by gowld »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #39
happymellon wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't DDG just a proxy for Bing? I can't imagine who would go to Microsoft for quality.

I believe I've seen DDG's CEO or founder on here claiming that they do not proxy requests through Bing and that they do their own indexing. I think they had been using Bing at some point but I'm pretty sure current DDG results is all DDG indexing. Probably still falling for most of the same tricks which blogspammers use for Google SEO, though.

DDG is powered by Bing plus other APIs and their own crawler.

https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources...

> To deliver Instant Answers on specific topics, DuckDuckGo leverages many sources, including specialized sources like Sportradar and crowd-sourced sites like Wikipedia.

> We also maintain our own crawler (DuckDuckBot) and many indexes to support our results.

> we have more traditional links and images in our search results too, which we largely source from Bing.

Re: Google Reneged on the Monopolistic Bargain

#44

Post by wyclif »

tdoggette wrote: post #2

> A company that can't figure out the difference between a scam like Better Homes and Gardens and a rigorous review site like Housefresh should be pouring every spare dime it brings in into fixing this problem. Not buying default search status on every platform so that we never try another search engine: they should be fixing their shit.

Google could fix it tomorrow if they wanted to, but the fact is they don't because there's no incentive for their business, which is advertising. As Upton Sinclair once put it, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Re: Google Reneged on the Monopolistic Bargain

#45

Post by wyclif »

Ancalagon wrote: post #33

Bummer optimizing hiring devs on leetcode skills doesn't lead to better search result engineering.

It has nothing to do with hiring competent engineers. It has to do with Google's business not being incentivized to provide better search. Google's business is advertising, therefore you are the product.

Re: Google Reneged on the Monopolistic Bargain

#46

Post by tdb7893 »

15457345234 wrote: post #35
AJ007 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has sucked for years, and the level of sucking has been covered extensively on hn. The one thing that was a real shock was how much more gas was left in the ad model engine. They've managed to grow substantially over the past couple of years largely by pushing advertisers in to a ROAS model that is clearly optimized to make Google more money: gross almost 2x from 2019 to 2023 -- from $161b to $307b. Net income…

Was it actually revenue growth from adverts or was it from a sudden splurge in pandemic-era spending caused by governments all over the world panic-signing up for Google Classroom and buying Chromebooks? Because I can see pretty much all of the 'growth' that occurred during 2020-2021 being unwound gradually as people realise that a lot of what happened was an absolute disaster for society. When it comes to making any…

Their financials are public, from my reading the growth was not driven by Chromebooks or classroom (unfortunately for Google since they would love to diversify from search/ads)

Re: Google Reneged on the Monopolistic Bargain

#47

Post by yCombLinks »

hypocrticalCons wrote: post #17
20after4 wrote: post #7

It's the very definition of selling out. This seems to be a very common trend with the vast majority of all previously respected institutions (at least in the USA). They have all sold out (literally sold the company, in many cases) and have now abandoned all principles (or pretenses) of decency and provision of value to customers. Now they are just trading on past integrity that is no longer reality. They will coast…

> just trading When Americans understand stockbuybacks should be illegal, that the entire stock market is a game played by monsters, then maybe, maybe you'll fix your shit

Stock buybacks are just a tax advantaged dividend. Why would anyone invest in a company if there isn't some way to turn that into a profit?

Re: Google Reneged on the Monopolistic Bargain

#48

Post by from-nibly »

wyclif wrote: post #44
tdoggette wrote: post #2

> A company that can't figure out the difference between a scam like Better Homes and Gardens and a rigorous review site like Housefresh should be pouring every spare dime it brings in into fixing this problem. Not buying default search status on every platform so that we never try another search engine: they should be fixing their shit.

Google could fix it tomorrow if they wanted to, but the fact is they don't because there's no incentive for their business, which is advertising. As Upton Sinclair once put it, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

They absolutely can't. They've innovators dilemma'd themselves. Their cash cow is not making sense any more and they can't investigate any new technologies to save themselves.

They came out with Gemini really late and they look like they don't know what they're doing. They are going to be late to the next disruptor too

Re: Google Reneged on the Monopolistic Bargain

#49

Post by vineyardmike »

stevage wrote: post #43

I feel like there is another big point being hinted at in these articles but not quite stated: Better Homes and Gardens is committing fraud and lying to website visitors.

I feel like this deserves to get more attention. Yes Google Search is bad, but how much new good content exists, and if Google (or anyone) just started deleting large chunks of the internet from search indices, I think there’d be complaints.

I’m not trying to defend Google, BUT I do this all the BHG style “fraud” should be punished. Posting junk content for click through ads and affiliate links is a sad way to make a living, and we should have no problem with booting them from the visible internet.

Sometimes I wish owners of popular brands let them die with dignity instead of selling their brand to be worn as skin for soulless PE fraud.

Re: Google Reneged on the Monopolistic Bargain

#50

Post by nicbou »

Topgamer7 wrote: post #41
AJ007 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has sucked for years, and the level of sucking has been covered extensively on hn. The one thing that was a real shock was how much more gas was left in the ad model engine. They've managed to grow substantially over the past couple of years largely by pushing advertisers in to a ROAS model that is clearly optimized to make Google more money: gross almost 2x from 2019 to 2023 -- from $161b to $307b. Net income…

A few weeks ago I bit the bullet and paid for kagi, as a dev it's night and day for finding documentation and relevant, non-spammy results.

Do you know how well it works for travel stuff? Google has become particularly useless at surfacing local blogs and results over content marketing from travel services.
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