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The man who killed Google Search?

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Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#421

Post by gverrilla »

readyplayernull wrote: post #220

> But do you know who has? Sundar Pichai, who previously worked at McKinsey — arguably the most morally abhorrent company that has ever existed, having played roles both in the 2008 financial crisis (where it encouraged banks to load up on debt and flawed mortgage-backed securities) and the ongoing opioid crisis, where it effectively advised Purdue Pharma on how to “growth hack” sales of Oxycontin. That helps explain…

In Brazil most of the ads I see on YT/Instagram are for scams indeed. Health scams, religious scams and financial/crypto scams, mostly.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#423

Post by cbsmith »

neilv wrote: post #35

I think this article would work better if it were written entirely like textbook traditional investigative journalism. And less like the modern TV opinion personality, or the random strong-opinion Web comments in which many of the rest of us (including myself) indulge.

Yes, I felt that the style of the writing lead me to doubt whether I was reading the full story (and indeed, the way Prabhakar's work at IBM is minimized reinforced that impression).

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#424

Post by wayne-li2 »

Symbiote wrote: post #312
devindotcom wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. ratfuck is a specific term, not just a general pejorative. and I think class traitor is appropriate here as well. but i get what you're saying. that's the result, pro and con, of the shift away from edited journalism to stuff like ed's newsletter.

I had to look this up — I've never heard it used in Britain. > Ratfucking is an American slang term for behind the scenes (covert) political sabotage or dirty tricks, particularly pertaining to elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratfucking

Whoa, I had no idea it was an actual term that’s applicable here. I thought the author was just creatively insulting the guy.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#425

Post by cbsmith »

TechDebtDevin wrote: post #84
neilv wrote: post #35

I think this article would work better if it were written entirely like textbook traditional investigative journalism. And less like the modern TV opinion personality, or the random strong-opinion Web comments in which many of the rest of us (including myself) indulge.

I was strongly motivated to upvote and share this article. I probably upvote and share 1/500 articles I read on this website. So I disagree, I think his tone helps convey how the bulk of people feel about Google's search product and gives us a name to actually blame. Whereas every other blog writes about the decline of Google with a sad tone underwritten with nostalgia and always fails to provide any sort of root cau…

> ...and gives us a name to actually blame.

I'm not sure that scapegoating makes the characterization of the article any better.

> atleast this guy has given us good information and context to understand Googles decline.

The style of the article gives good reason to think that the context & information is selectively provided.

> And of course, it's more entertaining when people are called out.

Yup.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#426

Post by WD-42 »

Nevermark wrote: post #86
romanhn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I struggled to keep going after "computer scientist class traitor". A very juvenile take that reflects poorly on the author, IMO.

Hyperbole that is quite obviously hyperbole is a well accepted literary device. It is a form of highlight via creative exaggeration of non-critical points, that is transparent, not deceptive, in service of making serious adjacent points. [0] The point here is to highlight the actually cartoonish level of dysfunction and damage with an intentionally cartoonish flourish. The "villian" in this case can be colorfully int…

Thank you for this. I found this article compelling not only because of the subject matter but because of how it was written. It's possible for something to be informative and entertaining at the same time - I think this article is both. I enjoy the flourishes and creativity.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#427

Post by cbsmith »

potatolicious wrote: post #344
yifanl wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, because this ends up with implying that if you just got rid of That One Fucking Guy, then everything with Google Search would be good. Which... is not a claim I'd agree with without extremely convincing evidence.

Ehh, I don't think that's really what it implies. It implies that getting rid of That Fucking Guy is a necessary but likely insufficient condition for improving things. Orgs that have been dysfunctional for a long time tend to have very complex dysfunctions, but there are still ways to fix these orgs, and it often starts by removing poor leadership from their posts. Does it immediately make everything sunshine and lo…

In terms of understanding the dynamic though, That Fucking Guy doesn't really help. At best it can be emblematic of the underlying dysfunction, but in reality, with complex organizational dynamics, it's the underlying forces that empower That Fucking Guy that are important to understand, because the whole problem is that their function in the organization are an inevitable consequence of the dysfunction, and with proper function the organization would be able to harness their skills productively.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#428

Post by miohtama »

> In the March 2019 core update to search, which happened about a week before the end of the code yellow, was expected to be “one of the largest updates to search in a very long time. Yet when it launched, many found that the update mostly rolled back changes, and traffic was increasing to sites that had previously been suppressed by Google Search’s “Penguin” update from 2012 that specifically targeted spammy search results, as well as those hit by an update from an August 1, 2018, a few months after Gomes became Head of Search.

So it is true that the quality of Google search results have decreased, and the cause is that they wanted more ad revenue and they achieved this by making the user to navigate through spammy results?

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#429

Post by p3rls »

wayne-li2 wrote: post #222

Even though I agree with what the author is saying, the tone of this article is off putting to me. There are ways to call out people for being bad at their job without resorting to “class traitor” and “ratfucker”. That being said, Google search is 100% dead. I append “reddit” to every Google query to get actual results from people, and I don’t see it on Reddit, I give up on my query.

Nah as someone who spent years getting beaten by wordpress admins with barely enough neural complexity to be called vertebrates in search results I'm going to concur with the author-- Prabhakar Raghavan has been waging a war against humanity's greatest communication medium and worse -- he's winning. He deserves all this contempt and more.

He's at least earned the equivalent of the Ajit Pai FCC chair treatment but because John Oliver and his audience can't understand this sorta complexity without a massive concurrent media literacy push it will never happen.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#430

Post by cbsmith »

davidgerard wrote: post #340
neilv wrote: post #35

I think this article would work better if it were written entirely like textbook traditional investigative journalism. And less like the modern TV opinion personality, or the random strong-opinion Web comments in which many of the rest of us (including myself) indulge.

The problem there is that nobody wrote that article, someone did write this one. You should ask yourself why that is.

That's the first question that came to mind while reading the article. Many of the possible answers that came to mind did nothing to improve my perception of the article.
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