Google: Search, plus Your World • Hacker News Board

Re: Google: Search, plus Your World

#81

Post by Zirro » Wed, Jan 11, 2012, 10:42 AM UTC

esrauch wrote: post #73

Zirro wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Write a post instead of downvoting me without explaining yourself. I went through my last 20 search queries and found that none of them were related to what I have in my inbox.

I didn't downvote you, but I really don't understand your point at all. Are you claiming that your email is completely impersonal and you don't care who reads it, but your search queries are deeply intimate? The claim that you are replying to is not that they are getting the exact same information anyway, it's that they are still getting personal information and machines, not people, are seeing it and showing you ads…

I was replying to myself, hoping to get the attention of whoever did downvote me. I did not believe it was you, since you sound like a reasonable person. I apologize if I didn't make that clear.

I also agree with this claim. I still understood the original post as "if they can read your e-mail, they know what you've been searching for anyway". This is simply not true.

Re: Google: Search, plus Your World

#82

Post by stfu » Thu, Jan 12, 2012, 2:28 PM UTC

laglad wrote: post #61

ErikRogneby wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is something we naturally do as humans. I've been thinking about "small world" connections lately. People that I know through disparate connections, sometimes via very different parts of the country. Then I think about the similarities... we're all probably in the same marketing demographics, age, wealth, education, ideology, etc... We've self selected to increase our probability of meeting. It's a small…

I agree that we humans filter ourselves into a bubble, but the recommendation systems are designed to discourage you from doing different. It is in their best interests for you to be as predictable as possible. Getting their recommendation algorithms to be supremely intelligent and nailing your interests is the hard way, meeting the user in the middle by reducing the set and complexity of his interests is the other e…

Now that's an interesting idea and it seems like a logical next step - first to predict the behavior and then trying to implement a latter of behavior changing steps to ultimately modify it.

But on the other hand I have to admit that the current status seems still highly rudimentary. The service most likely with the most data on me is Amazon and despite an almost 10 year customer history their suggestions are still nowhere near what I am looking for.

Re: Google: Search, plus Your World

#83

Post by troymc » Sat, Jan 14, 2012, 5:46 PM UTC

Zirro wrote: post #51

troymc wrote: post #49

For me, this story isn't so much about "Google makes search results more personal" as "Google makes SEO all about using Google+ more". (We now have stronger incentives to use Google+.)

"We now have stronger incentives to use Google+." Well, I sure don't. This just makes me happy I never started using it.

You may not want increased visibility or findability online, which is fine, but for any person or business who does, these changes from Google mean they have stronger incentives to use Google+.