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Google is dead. Where do we go now?

circusscientist.com

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Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#451

Post by x0x0 »

bix6 wrote: post #318
tsunamifury wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who leads large parts of ad tech for TikTok and worked at Google for 10 years, it’s the K shaped economy that is pressing SMBs out. Pure and simple Everyone can make up some complex theories but I see it in the numbers every day. Spend distribution is now k shaped and SMBs simply can’t compete at top end performance levels.

Can you share any numbers ie roughly how different the spend is? SMB spends $1k on ads but grandes spend $1M or something? Idk how it works.

I have a colleague who runs growth for a big consumer company driving value through their apps. They spend over $100m/year on install ads.

And the fact they price smbs out should be unsurprising: they're better at making money from a user; users are worth more to them; so they pay more.

Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#452

Post by m3kw9 »

Sharlin wrote: post #256
bsimpson wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to see how much of a behemoth Discord has become. Seems like there's a Discord for everything - from open source projects to hobbies and games to individual groups of friends/family. It's occupying the segment that subreddits historically have. However, it's perhaps-intentionally search-opaque. You can't Google to find a message/link/download that's gated by Discord. And it also gives a sense of comm…

If only Discord weren't so incredibly bloated and full of stupid features aimed at 14-year-old gamers.

everytime discord ask me to claim this account i just quit the app. they operate in some bs tech realm that no other service does.

Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#453

Post by jabwd »

GuB-42 wrote: post #446
actionfromafar wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you know?

They are probably going to make them obvious at first, like with Google search. But they can also make it more pernicious. For example by having companies pay them so that they can train their AI on their products, with regular updates. Not technically an ad, but the AI will be more aware of their products so that they are more likely to be recommended to the user. In other words, that's paying for the right to adver…

probably, probably and more probably.

Why would they ever make it obvious? It makes no sense. google just had the luck of political inaction, and eventually enshitified it further to the point where you might not know it was an ad.

Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#455

Post by aftbit »

jwrallie wrote: post #436
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still mourn G+. It was clearly put together by somebody who thought first and foremost about privacy. It made deciding who to share what with the central, most visible part of how it worked. And that's probably part of why it failed. Was it hard to choose? Nope. But I guarantee you that if Facebook added a little "hey, are you sure you want to share this post publicly with the whole world under your real name? Yes/…

Another mistake is that they had a significant presence in Brazil through Orkut, but they didn’t bother to integrate and migrate the users in. Orkut’s user base was already degraded through Facebook but it was not inexistent, as some features of Orkut were unique. One was that it allowed people to use alt accounts to participate on anonymous discussion, not much different from Reddit, I’m sure with some creativeness…

I was an Orkut user from the USA for a few years. The vibe was way nicer than Facebook. I think I was with them from 2007 to 2011 or so.

killedbygoogle.com says 2004 to 2014 so a decent chunk of the service's run.

Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#456

Post by crazygringo »

imron wrote: post #432
crazygringo wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Search died ages ago You might want to let Google know that, because the number of searches on Google appears to continue to be growing massively: https://searchengineland.com/google-5-trillion-searches-per-... Those numbers look like the exact opposite of dead or dying to me. As does Google's growing stock price over the same time period.

‘Numbers go up’ is the exact type of thinking that caused the death of search. From a user perspective, google search results are awful and almost always a complete waste of time.

Again, this "death of search" I hear so much about, but doesn't exist in the numbers.

If search results are such a waste of time, why do people keep using Google? In ever-increasing numbers? What's the explanation there?

Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#457

Post by Spooky23 »

lostlogin wrote: post #255
nostrademons wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my anecdotal experience, it's moved to private, trust-based channels: iMessage, WhatsApp, email, face-to-face interactions. Our 30-year bender of putting our lives online and blurring the public and the private has finally ended: people don't want to be online, don't trust social media, don't really trust any media, and are living simple local lives with a small circle of friends that they get together with regula…

> Our 30-year bender of putting our lives online and blurring the public and the private has finally ended I wish you were right. We took our kid to a stage show she really wanted to see. People round us kept checking their phones. They weren’t even really checking them. They held them and would turn the screen on and off, lighting the place up. They couldn’t be without them for more than 5 minutes. This, after 30 mi…

The alert checking is a thing.

But I’ve noticed with my 14 year old son and his friends that they are all about Snap and iMessage. Instagram and TikTok are their public fora.

Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#458

Post by nostrademons »

gcbirzan wrote: post #324
nostrademons wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it show up in the numbers on web usage, platform usage, etc? People who do this drop out of the sample - they don't show up in the numbers. As far as your stat gathering is concerned, they don't exist. If you're actually doing a census of people and asking about their web usage and social habits, it'd show up. So maybe Google or Facebook has the data if they were to do say cohort analysis on Google Analytics or…

But they still READ. So, if you 'interact' (and by that I mean do any write-like action, like commenting, posting, liking, whatever) less, that's gonna show up.

They don't, at least not necessarily. I look at my HN history and it's 13 hours ago, 6 days ago, 8 days ago, 13 days ago. Fifteen years ago I was #2 on the leaderboard (itself now gone, it listed users by total comment karma) and would post about 4-5 times a day. Now when I'm not posting, I'm actually not on the site and not reading replies. I just don't have time.

I think a decent-sized subset of Millennials have basically aged out of the time-surplus years of the early 20s and are now busy with kids and careers and families. And they aren't being replaced by the new 20-somethings, at least not on social media of the same form. The kids are still on text messages and Whatsapp and Discord and Roblox and Google Docs (!!), but they aren't interested in getting on the public Internet, and if they are, their parents won't let them.

Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#459

Post by gavmor »

efilife wrote: post #206
kuon wrote: post #138

I consider ads to be a cancer I hope it will die in every possible way.

Same. This blog post is actually good news

OK, but the poster is a party clown. How is he supposed to get business? He can't just show up to kids' birthdays when he hears them down the street.

Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#460

Post by drob518 »

cookiengineer wrote: post #278
nostrademons wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my anecdotal experience, it's moved to private, trust-based channels: iMessage, WhatsApp, email, face-to-face interactions. Our 30-year bender of putting our lives online and blurring the public and the private has finally ended: people don't want to be online, don't trust social media, don't really trust any media, and are living simple local lives with a small circle of friends that they get together with regula…

I had a very interesting discussion with a friend today, where I was talking to her about the /r/golang thread about Rob Pike's comments to OpenAI and how the thread was full of bots talking with other bots. No idea why the density of bots was so high in that thread, it was kind of absurd to see. Then she said: "I know nobody that comments on online forums. Nobody would ever comment to strangers on the internet. It's…

I know I self-censor a LOT.
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