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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

#711

Post by int_19h »

spaqin wrote: post #460
flyinglizard wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's down to US Government policies. If you tried middle-manning any for-profit like that, you'd get a cease and desist letter really quickly. But USG doesn't seem to care. We can't reasonably expect Google to be a gatekeeper here.

That's not just the US. I've seen that myself with Vietnam and Seychelles, and I'm sure it's a problem with any other country where a visa or other documents are required

Yes, it's the same everywhere. In any country with byzantine and convoluted visa and immigration procedures (i.e. most of them) there's a thriving industry of people who will eat the turds for you for a fee.

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

#712

Post by int_19h »

array_key_first wrote: post #666
symlinkk wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adblockers are a safety risk of their own - you’re giving @gorhill admin-level access to your browser.

This is the entire argument for manifest V3. So, if we believe this argument, then modern chromium derivatives should be safe with the ad blockers that run on them.

V3 still allows for extensions that have full access to the content of your websites, and obviously adblockers need to be in this category to function at all.

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

#713

Post by int_19h »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #491
Marsymars wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like there’s at least some country in the world where the legal regime would be amenable to ruling against Google if they were taken to court over trademark squatting by the trademark holders.

In Argentina it is illegal (since the nineties) to mention other brands. So a Coca Cola ad cannot reference Pepsi. Laundry detergents can not make references to other brands, so they say “better than other generic brands” without names or hinting any in particular. I suppose the exact wording is important here, but this practice sound dangerously close to violating this restriction.

"other generic brands" is pretty standard ad verbiage in all countries AFAIK. Even when there's no specific law, if you mention another brand by name, you open yourself up to a defamation lawsuit.

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

#714

Post by int_19h »

cyborgrising wrote: post #113
Mistletoe wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will you fight the inevitable slide that happens if you ever got on top? I’m convinced Google started with the absolute best of intentions before the money and greed turned them into a horror movie villain.

Observationally, Google search and Kagi are fundamentally different business models. Google followed/trailblazed the "enshitification" arc of providing a free service that sees widespread adoption by the public, and then financially exploiting the widespread adoption by leveraging usage of the service to serve ads like in the screenshot. Kagi is a subscription service you pay for and they generate their best effort a…

The real difference is market dominance. If Kagi was the dominant search engine used by 90% of all users, they could enshittify while still collecting subscription, and while that would lose them some users, it would still be profitable when everything is added up.

It's even worse for niches where there's some way to lock people in. E.g. look at streaming providers - everyone has either rolled out ads on paid plans or is planning to do so. Why? Because if you happen to have X as an exclusive in your catalog, then people who want to see X either have to suck it up or else figure out how to pirate it without getting caught.

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

#715

Post by int_19h »

sehansen wrote: post #496
MostlyStable wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since they are subscription based and not ad based, their incentives are inherently aligned with customer preferences. This doesn't mean that they are immune from getting worse, or just becoming complacent, but it does at least make it less likely. Ad-supported companies succumbing to enshittification is virtually guaranteed thanks to the misalignment of basic incentives between the company and users (note: not custo…

Exactly this. There's no guarantee Kagi will never get worse, but it will become worse in a different way than Google has since Kagi isn't ad supported.

One possibility is becoming ad supported in the future, though.

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

#716

Post by int_19h »

CSMastermind wrote: post #19

I'm old enough to remember when a big selling point of Google was that it didn't do this.

And yet they always knew that ad-supported business is going mean enshittification. Kagi website has this epic quote from the original Google paper to drive the point home:

"The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users... advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers."

— The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, 1998

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

#717

Post by int_19h »

tonmoy wrote: post #310
andrewmutz wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot the main source of pressure: you sell off equity in your company in exchange for cash. The buyers are buying the promise of future profits. At first, you still hold the vast majority of the voting rights, but over time you sell more and more and expectations rise and rise. Eventually you are an organization whose purpose is to return cash to shareholders in the near term. Hence a page full of ads, and no r…

Is that the reason Steam is still loved by users? (not sure how long that’ll last tho)

I think the fact that Valve is still a private corp is a big part of it, yes. It allows for continued ownership by people who have meaningful beliefs of what it means to do something the Right Way and who run the business accordingly. This isn't to say that private corps are always "good" like that - the temptation to go for easy pickings and enshittify is always there. But some owners at least won't do that for various reasons, while a public company seems to always end up chasing short-term profits above everything else.

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

#718

Post by int_19h »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #617
andrewmutz wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot the main source of pressure: you sell off equity in your company in exchange for cash. The buyers are buying the promise of future profits. At first, you still hold the vast majority of the voting rights, but over time you sell more and more and expectations rise and rise. Eventually you are an organization whose purpose is to return cash to shareholders in the near term. Hence a page full of ads, and no r…

>purpose is to return cash to shareholders in the near term. I see this constantly repeated in anti-capitalist/anti-corporate rhetoric, but on the other side, shareholder meetings, finance conferences, financial service talks, no one ever wants this. Maybe the 20 year old stock bros on discord pumping penny stocks, but no serious shareholder of any company with a name you might recognize. It happens, there are cases…

If shareholders didn't want it, then they wouldn't appoint (or keep in place) the top management that repeatedly and consistently makes those choices.

Look at the recent Microsoft layoffs. They purged the company of so much tech talent, and tanked morale for basically all the remaining workers. From any kind of long term perspective this is madness. Yet they were rewarded for it by the stock market.

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

#719

Post by int_19h »

eru wrote: post #388
dvngnt_ wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Used to be. Now the megacorp just buys the disrupting platform

You say that like it's a bad thing. Can you imagine a more effective way to incentivise more people to start even more disrupting platforms? Can you image a more effective way to get investors to give money to these upstarts? It's much easier to get your rabble-rousing startup to threaten disruption (and then be bought up as a precaution), than if you had to actually battle it out in the marketplace to the bitter end…

It's a bad thing for the rest of us, because it means that all those platforms don't actually disrupt anything at the end of the day, and we have to keep eating the same turds.

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

#720

Post by int_19h »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #619
boringg wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be nice if some companies instead of ramping up ads for revenue passed along the value to consumers? Once they made their money back on the original investments convert to a lifestyle and provide a valuable product without squeezing every penny our of it and in the end killing it. One day maybe.

Google's customers are advertisers. People overwhelmingly prefer ad-supported to subscription supported. Google would be a dramatically better service if everyone who used it paid. I really, really, cannot overstate that. The internet sucks because users feel entitled to everything on it for free. They don't want ads and they don't want to pay subscriptions. uBlock origin, archive.is, and constant complaining about h…

Google has almost $100 billion in cash reserves right now. Big tech together has over $1 trillion in cash - that's in the ballpark of the GDP of the top 20 countries.

The notion that Internet sucks because megacorps have to scrounge for cash doesn't pass the most basic smell test.

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