Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Hates You

sfgate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–49 of 49 posts

Re: Google Hates You

#41

Post by ceheaaf »

mimikatz wrote: post #30

You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower.

Nah. When an intelligent human makes a decision (say, someone who can get themselves hired at google), they're aware of the systemic effects of their behaviour.

Google is not a lawnmower. Google is people. And they hate you.

Re: Google Hates You

#42

Post by 0x69420 »

guessmyname wrote: post #33
jdw64 wrote: post #6

Also, I'm pretty sure Microsoft and Meta hate me as well. Honestly, if every major tech company dislikes me at this point, I'm starting to suspect it's a 'me' problem.

I always find titles like “Google Hates You” a bit weird. People usually argue that employees are not personally responsible for bad company decisions, that criticism should be aimed at the corporation itself, not at random engineers or designers working there. But then we turn around and assign human emotions to the corporation anyway. A company cannot literally “hate” anyone. It has no feelings, intentions, or cons…

the consequentialist "may as well" or "for all intents and purposes" is implicit. of course you can't ascribe literal teleology to something like a megacorp; diffusion of accountability is a defining trait of any sufficiently large organisation. but, "misaligned incentives" and hatred look the same from the sole of the boot. in both cases, you probably want to get your head off the curb before it comes down.

Re: Google Hates You

#44

Post by shaftway »

hilariously wrote: post #7
dack wrote: post #5

i guess i don't blame a writer who's job is threatened by this technology to write a piece like this. but the perspective is ultimately one where they are complaining about how it affects them, without regard to the end user. it's the same as toll booth operators complaining about fastpass

As a user I hate google's approach as well, not because of job related reasons, but the functionality keeps changing to no increased value to me. I don't see how you the end user would have a different opinion unless you did not use google before say 2016.

As a user I actually appreciate it. But most of the stuff I google is coding questions.

Before if I asked a question, the top 3 results would be StackOverflow. I'd click into the first one and find out that the question was subtly different than mine making its answer useless, but it included a lot of similar words. Go back and click into the second one. It's exactly my problem, asked three years ago, no answer. Go back and click into the third one. Same question, but it's been answered. Great. But the accepted answer has a score of -3 and another answer has a score of 5. So which one do I follow? Whoops, it's actually neither of them, because the library has broken both of those workflows.

Now I get my answer right away 90% of the time. And if I don't then I scroll down and I'm not worse off than I was 2 years ago.

Re: Google Hates You

#45

Post by themadturk »

dack wrote: post #5

i guess i don't blame a writer who's job is threatened by this technology to write a piece like this. but the perspective is ultimately one where they are complaining about how it affects them, without regard to the end user. it's the same as toll booth operators complaining about fastpass

But the writer is an end user. How does his perspective not regard the end user?

Re: Google Hates You

#48

Post by oliculipolicula »

jdw64 wrote: post #36
guessmyname wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find titles like “Google Hates You” a bit weird. People usually argue that employees are not personally responsible for bad company decisions, that criticism should be aimed at the corporation itself, not at random engineers or designers working there. But then we turn around and assign human emotions to the corporation anyway. A company cannot literally “hate” anyone. It has no feelings, intentions, or cons…

First, what you are arguing is that a corporation itself has no feelings, is merely an algorithm, and that projecting human emotions onto a company is meaningless. However, based on my general observation, a company's primary purpose is often the self-actualization of its owner. People usually cite monetization as a corporate goal, but since owners rarely hate money, the two usually go hand in hand. In reality, thoug…

Personally, I like the self-actualization idea.

in the Ferrari Luce debacle, who will be self-actualizing?

Is it the suited New Yorker in the photo?

https://www.thedrive.com/news/ferraris-old-boss-makes-it-cle...

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

How about (Our Little) Jony (Ive), Enzo, "Chicago" Leo, Hyundai's owners, or Chinese buyers

It seems that to answer that, the "intended" versus actual flow of money or status might help us turn this into a science. Because it frames a connection between inferences about intentions and predictions about flow.

If we bring in the topic of users and citizens, I feel that the polar opposite to "self-actualization" is "collective punishment".

But, I don't dare to discuss that yet (see sibling comments to yours below)

Re: Google Hates You

#49

Post by hackboyfly »

themadturk wrote: post #46
hackboyfly wrote: post #38

Can someone solve this equation for me. I give google content and they pay me in traffic. Why would I give Google my content if they stop paying me for it?

They've already taken it; what are you going to do about it?

Not index on google? Prevent bot crawling?
Post reply on HN