Live data from Hacker News

Google changes its search box

blog.google

851–860 of 961 posts

Re: Google changes its search box

#851
post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people will. The vast majority won’t. You are not playing for an audience, only for crawlers, so what is the point?

Those who won’t were doing it for the money. Those who continue are those who do it for passion, or those whose recipe is just a way to attract people to their business (e.g. kitchenware company). I don’t think it is necessarily bad, the quantity will decrease but the quality may even improve

> Those who continue are those who do it for passion

Nothing kills passion faster than your only audience being an AI crawler.

Re: Google changes its search box

#852

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My other main issue with the no-net neutrality world is that it also means websites would have to pay ISP’s or be artificially throttled. That’s a huge problem. It’s one thing to say we need to pay. It’s another for ISP’s to get 3 pulls at the hose (paid for a connection, paid for what we can browse, paid for who provides the sites) when some of those elements don’t even require more (or at least much) effort or infr…

Net neutrality was always about your ISP. It never meant pay sites couldn't exist.

Not pay sites. I’m talking about site owners having to pay ISP’s or risk being artificially throttled in favor of those who do pay them.

Re: Google changes its search box

#853

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never has been. No source or tool is. It’s a noble dream that can’t be achieved

Nobody is reasonably expecting perfectly unbiased information, just reasonably unbiased, and that’s pretty easy to find

It’s not “reasonably unbiased” or whatever we want to call it. Even if we want to believe it’s possible, the very existence of SEO invalidates it. You push yourself to the top by using techniques that have little (often nothing if we’re honest) to do with the merits of the information. Rankings literally do not correlate with quality or lack of bias. It’s about the specific words you use, the way your site is formatted, engagement, etc. None of that is reflective of the quality of information.

As I said in another comment, just look at “Google bombing.” There was a time when people would mount public campaigns to artificially drive pages to be associated with certain words, like I remember when people made it so if you search “failure” you got “George W. Bush.”

To use a different example: it would be like saying we know the quality of a car because of how many units sold. The driving force could be many unrelated factors, like the visual aesthetics, the feel, etc. which don’t tell you anything about the MPG, the upkeep, and other info most of us would consider key indicators of quality.

For a long time there was a decent correlation with the quality of the information and how far up the Google search it sat. But you are putting way too much stock in the quality of that information. It has always required heavy scrutiny.

Re: Google changes its search box

#854
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which as some running a website raises a fascinating question. If Google is just going to crawl my sites and present information as an AI summary on their site, then what exactly do I gain by allowing Googlebot to crawl my sites?

A couple of years back I worked with a company which maintained specific data which was the main traffic driver on that page. Google approached them and wanted to pay for the rights to get the data and display it on top of the search results, a feature which was fairly new back then. This was an interesting dilemma because it was very clear that the money was way less than the loss in ad revenue due to traffic drop,…

But like why would anyone make original content or websites anymore if google actively works to ensure you make no money

Re: Google changes its search box

#855

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, we can collectively "fight back" by not using Google and teaching others around us to do so as well. There are plenty of decent [1] and great (better) alternatives, where you're not the product [2]! [1]: https://alternativeto.net/software/google-search/?license=fr... [2]: https://alternativeto.net/software/google-search/?license=co...

We can fight back better by falsifying information when the crawler is detected to be Google.

You can make this particularly juicy by targeting information that could cause legal/financial trouble for companies.

Incorrect legal advice, incorrect critical statistics or incorrect compliance information.

Make it a genuine liability to rely on the AI summaries.

Re: Google changes its search box

#856
PSA: kagi is a great search that still actually searches, allows you to customize results, and only uses ai when you ask for it. Only catch is that it's a pay service. Definitely worth it IMO. You can still get info directly from source sites rather than laundered through an unreliable AI. Not affiliated, just a happy user.

https://kagi.com

Re: Google changes its search box

#858
post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But ultimately that strategy is good for the consumer right? No. It may be good for the consumer right now, but not ultimately (and on top of that, I would argue that reducing everyone to a consumer is already the wrong framing -- you need to ask what's good for the citizens). Having ten competing supermarkets with various interweaving supply lines is ultimately much better than having one giant supermarket, becaus…

Do you think Walmart’s prices are higher than you’d pay if there were just ten competing stores with the same product mix, each of which did not have the leverage to squeeze suppliers?

Please please please learn the basics of monopolies.

Re: Google changes its search box

#859
post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So when will you stop visiting HN?

Probably after the Algorithm adds its own custom tailored preference weighing to the HN submissions and meaningfully summarizes the discussion.

And then you will dictate your predictions on the future of the internet which your agent will flesh out into a comment?

But I would guess that the agents would already know their handlers well enough to answer for them.

Which will then get summarized for others by their agents.

Re: Google changes its search box

#860
post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And half the time, the sources turn out to be sarcastic jokes on reddit.

So the bots are not recognizing the sarcasm font?

I’d expect the sentiment analysis to be better, yes.

If the bots take everything they read at face value, how useful are they really?

Post reply on HN