To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

Post by mrguyorama » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 8:36 PM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #205

tryptophan wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>2) 20 years of experience fighting SEO spam. Tangential - but does anyone else feel that google results are useless a lot of the time? If you search for something, you will get 100% SEO optimized shitty ad-ridden blog/commercial pages giving surface level info about what you searched about. I find for programming/IT topics its pretty good, but for other topics it is horrible. Unless you are very specific with your s…

Yes, I feel like Google search results have very gradually become more irrelevant and spammy over the past decade or so. There are 2 issues, I think. Firstly, the SE-optimised spam, which has become very good as masquerading as genuine content. Secondly, Google has dumbed search syntax down a bit, and often seems to outright ignore double quoted phrases, presumably thinking it knows better than I what I want. As a de…

Post by root_axis » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 8:44 PM UTC

linuxftw wrote: post #466

rpiguy wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am personally all for freedom of information and also would like the concept of protected groups to go away, however... Liable is incredibly hard to prove in court, and usually cases are taken in civil court not criminal court. Can a platform ban specific groups? I see where your argument is coming from. Commerce is allowed by the Constitution for the common good (to serve everyone). Could Walmart, for example, say…

I think specifically in the case of platform vs publisher, there is federal law that gives some sort of extra legal protection to platforms. In order to get these protections, they have to behave a certain way. I'm not sure about this, but it's an argument I've heard. > Liable is incredibly hard to prove in court, and usually cases are taken in civil court not criminal court. Going to court is expensive, even if you…

    1. No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

    2. No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
      2.a any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
      2.b any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).[1]

Post by amelius » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 8:46 PM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #345

noahl wrote: post #61

Okay, this is a relatively serious proposal to require Google to allow API access to its search index, with the premise that it would democratize the search engine ecosystem. There are some issues with the regulations he proposes (you have to allow throttling to prevent DDoS attacks, and you can't let anyone with API access add content to prevent garbage results), but it's roughly feasible. The main problem is, I thi…

> 1) a record of searches and user clicks for the past 20 years From what I can tell, Google cares a lot more about recency. When I switch over to a new framework or language, search results are pretty bad for the first week, horrible actually as Google thinks I am still using /other language/. I have to keep appending the language / framework name to my queries. After a week or so? The results are pure magic. I can…

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #486

malvosenior wrote: post #456

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You conveniently leave off: "The proof is a senior Google employee admitting to bias and manipulating results in the Project Veritas video."

https://medium.com/@gennai.jen/this-is-not-how-i-expected-mo... >Project Veritas has edited the video to make it seem that I am a powerful executive who was confirming that Google is working to alter the 2020 election. On both counts, this is absolute, unadulterated nonsense, of course. In a casual restaurant setting, I was explaining how Google’s Trust and Safety team (a team I used to work on) is working to help pr…

Post by joshuamorton » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 8:54 PM UTC

blackflame7000 wrote: post #465

d1zzy wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you have to acknowledge that without the cross-financing those "markets" wouldn't even exist. Before Google Maps we had a few online map services and they were terrible. Google Maps redefined what it means to have free access to web based interactive global maps, it changed how people find things and it was all payed by the ad business. Later on some monetizing efforts were made for it and competitors started to…

> "Before Google Maps we had a few online map services and they were terrible. Google Maps redefined what it means to have free access to web based interactive global maps" This is not true. MapQuest revolutionized things almost 10 years earlier than Google Maps. Google search is what allowed Google Maps to overtake MapQuest. Also, Android providing real-time traffic data of all their users gave them the winning form…