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Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

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Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#621

Post by reaperducer »

buellerbueller wrote: post #579
close04 wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you go to IKEA for IKEA and get IKEA. With the phone stores or search engines you go to them for $result and you get $something_else. It's similar but not quite the same. Even the parallel with the physical world fails us here, IKEA can't put everyone's desired product at the entrance. Google can.

When I go to IKEA for a desk chair, I have to walk though many other unrelated things to see the desk chairs. The difference is that IKEA sells IKEA only.

When I go to IKEA for a desk chair, I have to walk though many other unrelated things to see the desk chairs. The difference is that IKEA sells IKEA only.

This is the sort of thing that makes people on HN start screaming "ZOMG! Walled garden!!!!11!!eleventy!1"

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#622

Post by yifanl »

squigz wrote: post #544
rchaud wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's already happened to an elderly family member who was trying to troubleshoot a printer problem. The top results were 1-800 hotlines run by scammers looking to get remote access to their machine to "fix" the issue. Google has hordes of these companies padding their pockets and won't lift a finger to remove them.

As my parents get older, I worry more about this. Are there any good, easy-to-understand resources for spotting and avoiding phishing scams and such things for non-tech audiences?

The only real difference that matters between a fake site and a real site is that the information on it is genuine, the form doesn't really factor into it. Which makes this a very tricky problem: You can't tell if the data is genuine before you have the genuine data.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#623

Post by Workaccount2 »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #404
eru wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are buybacks defrauding anyone? They just return money to shareholders. The only material difference with dividends is the tax treatment. Even all the incentives are the same. > It's also unsustainable, in that you can only do this for so long before you've bought up all the open shares and there's so few remaining that your company is no longer effectively tradeable. What makes you think so? https://en.wikipedia…

> How are buybacks defrauding anyone? Mr Doctorow's point is that the company is taking money from its operations, which it should be spending on expanding those operations and increasing its value, and spending that money on artificially inflating its share price, by effectively wash trading the shares, creating artificial demand, and artificially reducing supply. If you bought shares in the company as a long-term p…

I can tell why Mr. Docotorow is a sci-fi author and not a finance guy.

This is like listening to RFK talk about medicine.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#624

Post by tempodox »

jsheard wrote: post #12

They do the same thing on the Play Store, for example I just searched for Firefox and the first result is a sponsored spot for Opera. Does Apple do that on the App Store? A funnier example: searching for Amazon gives Temu as the first result. Searching for Temu gives Shein as the first result. Searching for Shein gives Shein as the first result! ...but only because they outbid everyone else for the ad spot on their o…

> Does Apple do that on the App Store?

The iOS AppStore is just as bad. Even if your search term is the exact app name, they’ll show you random stuff first (maybe they’re hoping you buy before realizing it wasn’t what you were looking for). And since App Store contents are like 98% crap, the chances of randomly finding something worthwhile are miniscule.

Letting users do what they want to is just not a business model for these megacorps.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#625

Post by fluoridation »

reaperducer wrote: post #621
buellerbueller wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I go to IKEA for a desk chair, I have to walk though many other unrelated things to see the desk chairs. The difference is that IKEA sells IKEA only.

When I go to IKEA for a desk chair, I have to walk though many other unrelated things to see the desk chairs. The difference is that IKEA sells IKEA only. This is the sort of thing that makes people on HN start screaming "ZOMG! Walled garden!!!!11!!eleventy!1"

I mean, that's not what a walled garden is. A walled garden would be if IKEA sold houses that you can only put IKEA furniture in.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#626

Post by redbell »

Google got misled by the term mid journey so, it put the result mid page :)

An interesting search term that, at least for me, always returns the four top results as sponsored is "web hosting": https://www.google.com/search?q=web+hosting

Also, searching for "netcup", I got two sponsored cloud services before seeing "https://www.netcup.com/": https://www.google.com/search?q=netcup

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#627

Post by flobosg »

dmbche wrote: post #391
alanh wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right? Google is dog caca now. Myself and everyone I know keep getting sent to AI-written garbage nonsense slop websites, or for some reason, to the Hindustan Times

oddly this "caca" felt more visceral to me that most "poop"'s or "shit"'s I've seen in a bit. summoned an image instantly. probably just surprise - good choice!

"Caca" is more kiki and "poop" is more bouba.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#629

Post by stetrain »

remus wrote: post #445
thrtythreeforty wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you in principle sue people buying these ads for trademark infringement? (I realize in practice the answer is that it's not worth the game of whack-a-mole.)

Where is the trademark infringement? It's like honda buying an advert outside a VW dealership.

The trademark infringement is when their ad includes someone else's trademark.

Look at the screenshot in this post. All four of the ads at the top of the search results include the trademarked name "Midjourney" in the title of the ad.

This is more like putting up a giant sign outside of your Honda dealership saying "Best deals on new VWs!" but when you pull in they don't sell VWs, they sell their own competing products.

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