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The man who killed Google Search?

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Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#831

Post by Terr_ »

bbor wrote: post #826
barfbagginus wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drop your good intentions - towards Google, that is. Work to sabotage and collapse the organization - do that for the good of humanity. Thank you for your work, and good luck getting out without harm or reprisal Hit em hard.

Very much appreciate the sentiment and kind words! Reminds me of Yudkowsky’s line[1] about AI: “we should be willing to destroy a rogue datacenter by airstrike.” This kind of talk sounds insane in the Silicon Valley language game, but we’re talking about real people’s lives here and sometimes implied violence needs to be made explicit. And that’s what I see your suggestion as, ultimately —- but that’s probably becaus…

> Reminds me of Yudkowsky’s line[1] about AI: “we should be willing to destroy a rogue datacenter by airstrike.”

That op-ed reminds me of some short fiction you might like:

https://www.teamten.com/lawrence/writings/coding-machines/

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#832

Post by nothercastle »

jokoon wrote: post #385
gregw134 wrote: post #250

Ex-Google search engineer here (2019-2023). I know a lot of the veteran engineers were upset when Ben Gomes got shunted off. Probably the bigger change, from what I've heard, was losing Amit Singhal who led Search until 2016. Amit fought against creeping complexity. There is a semi-famous internal document he wrote where he argued against the other search leads that Google should use less machine-learning, or at leas…

simplicity is always the recipe for success, unfortunately, most engineers are drawn to complexity like moth to fire if they were unable to do some AB testing between a ML search and a non-ML search, they deserve their failure 100% there are not enough engineers blowing the whistle against ML

Engineers love simplicity but management hates it and won’t promote people that strive towards it. A simple system is the most complex system to design.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#833

Post by nothercastle »

carlossouza wrote: post #532
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies this size die several years before the body hits the floor. They're dead when everyone starts to hate them and someone says "no, look how much money they're making, they're fine." That's the fatal blow, because they think they're fine, and keep doing the things that make everyone hate them. At that point you're just waiting for someone else to offer an alternative. Then people prefer the alternative because…

That also sounds a lot like Blockbuster. Google continues generating profits out of inertia and a lack of a better alternative. It went for “don’t be evil” to “a necessary evil” (just until something a little better appears).

I think they are just at attain median levels of evil now.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#834

Post by iamleppert »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #475
dekhn wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that Google fire all the engineers who work on Cloud? That would... be a very interesting business decision, likely closing any door for them working with enterprise in the future. Here's a few more realistic changes that Alphabet could make: - shut down X - shut down Verily - sell calico or shut it down if no buyers - sell Fiber or shut it down if no buyers - shut down Intrinsic, Wing, and all the…

I was suggesting that they fire all the engineers that work on things that don't make money. It was only last quarter that Cloud actually made a profit. That said, I think you make a reasonable restructuring case; Now you just have to figure out how to get leadership to buy in and execute on that plan. In my experience two things work against that. 1) If it isn't their idea that don't believe it will do any good and…

Here here! Google needs to trim the fat, desperately! They need to eliminate all of their non revenue generating departments, ban all internal discussion forums and such that aren't laser focused on the job at hand. Cut 30-40% of all engineers, and get rid of the free food and other benefits. Install vending machines and charge for meals at their cafeterias, run them like any other business and make a profit. Get rid of free employee health benefits, make the employees pay for them. And for god sake get rid of that ridiculous swimming pool! Anything that isn't directly in the service of delivering value for shareholders needs to be done away with, starting with those hair-brained cash burning crazy X projects.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#835

Post by srean »

arromatic wrote: post #161

Can Ben Gomes not launch a google rival or join bing ? I am sure msft will welcome him with open arm like they did Sam Altman . VSs will fund him without a second thought too .

Ben Gomes' Google and Microsoft (even now) are different beasts in terms of internal politics and culture[0]. Successful Googlers need not be successful at Microsoft.

[0] To understand that, recall Vic Gundothra was an Microsoft export to Google. That's the kind of people that thrive in Microsoft.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#836

Post by x0x0 »

potatolicious wrote: post #339
JohnFen wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where he argued against the other search leads that Google should use less machine-learning This better echoes my personal experience with the decline of Google search than TFA: it seems to be connected to the increasing use of ML in that the more of it Google put in, the worse the results I got were.

It's also a good lesson for the new AI cycle we're in now. Often inserting ML subsystems into your broader system just makes it go from "deterministically but fixably bad" to "mysteriously and unfixably bad".

mysteriously with a helping of random too!

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#837

Post by underlipton »

romanhn wrote: post #495
phyzome wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Class traitor" isn't a juvenile insult. It has a fairly well-defined meaning and describes a set of problematic behaviors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_traitor Are you saying that it's an incorrect description, or are you just generally against accusing people of things?

It's a ridiculous term that promotes polarization and dumbs down the level of discourse. I have the same reaction to it as when I see "bootlicker" as applied to anyone who takes the company's side (or is in management in general). There's too much adversarial name-calling these days, and not enough seeking understanding.

It only "promotes polarization" if you have already decided that anyone who uses it "dumbs down the level of discourse." If you instead give them the benefit of the doubt that they're trying to make an intelligent point about a situation or dynamic, and then try to understand that point, and then reason about that point's validity, then you will finally find yourself actually engaging in the "level of discourse" that you purport to (but are actually undermining with your kneejerk disdain).

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#838

Post by x0x0 »

ajross wrote: post #524
oblio wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is ML the new SOAP? Looks like a silver bullet and 5 years later you're drowning in complexity for no discernible reason?

So... obviously SOAP was dumb[1], and lots of people saw that at the time. But SOAP was dumb in obvious ways, and it failed for obvious reasons, and really no one was surprised at all. ML isn't like that. It's new. It's different. It may not succeed in the ways we expect; it may even look dumb in hindsight. But it absolutely represents a genuinely new paradigm for computing and is worth studying and understanding on…

Yeah, I'm staring at my use of chatgpt to write a 50 line python program that connected to a local sqlite db and ran a query; for each element returned, made an api call or ran a query against a remote postgres db; depending on the results of that api call, made another api call; saved the results to a file; and presented results in a table.

Chatgpt generated the entirety of the above w/ me tweaking one line of code and putting creds in. I could have written all of the above, but it probably would have taken 20-30 minutes. With chatgpt I banged it out in under a minute, helped a colleague out, and went on my way.

Chatgpt absolutely is a real advancement. Before they released gpt4, there was no tech in the world that could do what it did.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#839

Post by underlipton »

JohnMakin wrote: post #242

What a turn from all the “Google search is good, actually” stuff that was popping up around here a ~year ago. I don’t think anyone can still say that with a straight face - it’s nearly an unusable product unless you are searching for a product you want to buy, and even then, not that great.

Speculation: they gave up astroturfing, because they've fully abandoned search now that AI is the future.

Re: The man who killed Google Search?

#840

Post by fuzzfactor »

romanhn wrote: post #598
oldkinglog wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you also take a wage, then you're also a class traitor by any reasonable definition, because denying the existence of class struggle only benefits capitalists - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_conflict

Thanks for helping me make my point. How's it up there in the socialist ivory tower? See, I grew up in Soviet Union and seen socialism's effects first-hand. It thoroughly disabused me of the notion of the holy class struggle and made me an unabashed capitalist (though I imagine our definitions of what this implies will differ).

Capital is Other People's Money (OPM) and capitalism is crafted so that's what rules.

Comparatively, socialism is other people's labor. That may be all you can do if there are not many other resources.

Free Enterprise is something completely different altogether.

For the Soviet natives I've known who have come to the US, it has often turned out to be the Free Enterprise which was the most promising thing they found which was not in their previous environment.

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