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...and this is how Google opens itself to attack from a group that is ready to "disrupt" search. I, for one, love DuckDuckGo because my search results yield ...

...and this is how Google opens itself to attack from a group that is ready to "disrupt" search. I, for one, love DuckDuckGo because my search results yield ...wait for it, search results! No, seriously, that's why I go there in the first place. To find stuff. Google has forgotten why they were successful in the first place and has instead pushed monetization to the detriment of their flag ship product.

ftio 11y ago
Google hasn't forgotten anything. Anecdotally, most users do not know the difference between paid results and organic results, and the top paid result is usually what the user wants anyway. Do you think Google didn't test this on millions (billions, even) of searches? If showing additional paid results negatively impacted either CTR or first-search successes or whatever metrics Google thought were important for their long-term success, they'd have surely not gone all in on this model. Paid results are search results.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  Yes, its profitable for Google, but I'm 90% certain this is going to push me and the few people left at my $DayJob who use Google to DDG. Honestly, the only value Google has to me now is Google Apps because I like them better than Office365.
- gboudrias 11y ago
  Although I'm sure you're correct, this is a very short-sighted mentality, which I believe to be the downfall of most big corporations (short-term thinking). Power users definitely know the difference between paid results and real results, and over time will steer everyone they can off of Google if it persists in showing a lack of respect for the intelligence of its users. It might take a long time, but some will leave, and over time more will follow. But that won't show in the next quarter's projections, and after that it will be too late.
  - theseatoms 11y ago
    I tend to agree with your line of thinking, but what's the first alternative to Google right now? DuckDuckGo?
  - Analemma_ 11y ago
    > Power users definitely know the difference between paid results and real results, and over time will steer everyone they can off of Google if it persists in showing a lack of respect for the intelligence of its users. When I start seeing technical people, HN comments, etc. advocating for using Bing instead of Google, I'll believe this. I don't think it's ever gonna ever happen. Google's power users are, if anything, an even more captive and loyal audience than Joe Public, and they know it.
  - imron 11y ago
    Exactly. There's a reason I switched from altavista to google back in the late nineties. I'm sure altavista was guided by various metrics too, but those weren't the metrics that I as a search user found important.
    - rsync 11y ago
      It's odd you would say that because, looking back, no search engine has ever been more precise or feature filled than altavista was. You could do very complex boolean logic searches with multiple, nested (()) and "" ... As opposed to google where even the "allinsite:" tag does not even function properly anymore, and where half of your search results will not even contain your search terms. I really miss altavista, actually ...
      - imron 11y ago
        I don't miss scrolling past a page of ads before getting to search results. You are right that Google deciding to 'helpfully' remove terms from my search query is frustrating.
  - larzang 11y ago
    Power users have ublock installed and don't see any of this anyway.
- realusername 11y ago
  They don't know the difference between both because everything has been done to make no difference between them. Before they where pink, then they were white-ish, now they are completely white (like the results), now side ads are moved and pushed to the list of results along with the rest, which makes it even harder for average users to see a difference. But yeah, I'm sure making ads look like results brings more clicks. The downside of that is Google basically becomes more and more unusable for queries directly generating money (like "buy <something>").
  - newjersey 11y ago
    > Paid results are search results. I think grand parent has a point. If someone wins the top spot for a certain keyword like "PayPal" it is probably because it is good enough to win it. Of course, there is probably more work needed there but if the add doesn't perform then no matter how much I bid the ad won't show up to people, at least not to many people. some examples https://imgur.com/a/gY86r https://imgur.com/a/gY86r Google needs to do more to prevent malicious vendors but at least things like this http://i.imgur.com/PTDcMsn.png http://i.imgur.com/PTDcMsn.png are in the right direction.
- grandalf 11y ago
  > most users do not know the difference There are two trends: more overall internet users, and a growing subset of the users that never clicks on ads. That leaves the users who can't tell the difference as the primary marketing target. I think the number of ads a person attends to per day is an inverse predictor of intelligence. Google is acting more and more Yahoo-like.
melted 11y ago
DDG exists because Google lets it exist. It's not really a full blown search engine.
- silverbax88 11y ago
  It's funny, I recall people saying that about Microsoft 'letting Google exist' at one point...
  - melted 11y ago
    At one point Microsoft had an option to buy Google for peanuts. Ballmer declined because he didn't see how it'd ever make money.
- mrweasel 11y ago
  How so? I don't see how Google could stop DuckDuckGo. It's not really relevant either, the two companies aren't really the same types of businesses. DDG is a very niche, and I doubt it would scale to the size of Google. Likewise Google have to make some compromises, that DDG will not, to finance it self.
  - melted 11y ago
    Google is one of DDGs backends, and the highest quality one at that. DDG does not have its own crawlers or index. Nor could it: those things cost hundreds of millions of dollars per year to run and maintain. [Edit: apparently this is not true. DDG does not use Google, though it does use Bing and some other broad and narrow coverage search engines]
    - AdamSC1 11y ago
      DuckDuckGo in no way uses Google. We do use other sources, but Google isn't one of them.
      - melted 11y ago
swampthinker 11y ago
Completely disagree. Lots of sponsored search results are already what I'm looking for in the first place.
- falcolas 11y ago
  The difference, in my experience, is that clicking on the non-ad result takes me to the company's home (or product) page, which is what I wanted. On the other hand, clicking on the ad usually takes me through several dozen redirects and to some form of ad on the company's site, at which point I need to find a way to navigate to the product page. The usability of ad clicks from Google is usually significantly worse than the organic results, even when they're the same company.

ftio 11y ago

Google hasn't forgotten anything. Anecdotally, most users do not know the difference between paid results and organic results, and the top paid result is usually what the user wants anyway. Do you think Google didn't test this on millions (billions, even) of searches? If showing additional paid results negatively impacted either CTR or first-search successes or whatever metrics Google thought were important for their long-term success, they'd have surely not gone all in on this model. Paid results are search results.

fweespeech 11y ago
Yes, its profitable for Google, but I'm 90% certain this is going to push me and the few people left at my $DayJob who use Google to DDG. Honestly, the only value Google has to me now is Google Apps because I like them better than Office365.
gboudrias 11y ago
Although I'm sure you're correct, this is a very short-sighted mentality, which I believe to be the downfall of most big corporations (short-term thinking). Power users definitely know the difference between paid results and real results, and over time will steer everyone they can off of Google if it persists in showing a lack of respect for the intelligence of its users. It might take a long time, but some will leave, and over time more will follow. But that won't show in the next quarter's projections, and after that it will be too late.
- theseatoms 11y ago
  I tend to agree with your line of thinking, but what's the first alternative to Google right now? DuckDuckGo?
- Analemma_ 11y ago
  > Power users definitely know the difference between paid results and real results, and over time will steer everyone they can off of Google if it persists in showing a lack of respect for the intelligence of its users. When I start seeing technical people, HN comments, etc. advocating for using Bing instead of Google, I'll believe this. I don't think it's ever gonna ever happen. Google's power users are, if anything, an even more captive and loyal audience than Joe Public, and they know it.
- imron 11y ago
  Exactly. There's a reason I switched from altavista to google back in the late nineties. I'm sure altavista was guided by various metrics too, but those weren't the metrics that I as a search user found important.
  - rsync 11y ago
    It's odd you would say that because, looking back, no search engine has ever been more precise or feature filled than altavista was. You could do very complex boolean logic searches with multiple, nested (()) and "" ... As opposed to google where even the "allinsite:" tag does not even function properly anymore, and where half of your search results will not even contain your search terms. I really miss altavista, actually ...
    - imron 11y ago
      I don't miss scrolling past a page of ads before getting to search results. You are right that Google deciding to 'helpfully' remove terms from my search query is frustrating.
- larzang 11y ago
  Power users have ublock installed and don't see any of this anyway.
realusername 11y ago
They don't know the difference between both because everything has been done to make no difference between them. Before they where pink, then they were white-ish, now they are completely white (like the results), now side ads are moved and pushed to the list of results along with the rest, which makes it even harder for average users to see a difference. But yeah, I'm sure making ads look like results brings more clicks. The downside of that is Google basically becomes more and more unusable for queries directly generating money (like "buy <something>").
- newjersey 11y ago
  > Paid results are search results. I think grand parent has a point. If someone wins the top spot for a certain keyword like "PayPal" it is probably because it is good enough to win it. Of course, there is probably more work needed there but if the add doesn't perform then no matter how much I bid the ad won't show up to people, at least not to many people. some examples https://imgur.com/a/gY86r https://imgur.com/a/gY86r Google needs to do more to prevent malicious vendors but at least things like this http://i.imgur.com/PTDcMsn.png http://i.imgur.com/PTDcMsn.png are in the right direction.
grandalf 11y ago
> most users do not know the difference There are two trends: more overall internet users, and a growing subset of the users that never clicks on ads. That leaves the users who can't tell the difference as the primary marketing target. I think the number of ads a person attends to per day is an inverse predictor of intelligence. Google is acting more and more Yahoo-like.

melted 11y ago

DDG exists because Google lets it exist. It's not really a full blown search engine.

silverbax88 11y ago
It's funny, I recall people saying that about Microsoft 'letting Google exist' at one point...
- melted 11y ago
  At one point Microsoft had an option to buy Google for peanuts. Ballmer declined because he didn't see how it'd ever make money.
mrweasel 11y ago
How so? I don't see how Google could stop DuckDuckGo. It's not really relevant either, the two companies aren't really the same types of businesses. DDG is a very niche, and I doubt it would scale to the size of Google. Likewise Google have to make some compromises, that DDG will not, to finance it self.
- melted 11y ago
  Google is one of DDGs backends, and the highest quality one at that. DDG does not have its own crawlers or index. Nor could it: those things cost hundreds of millions of dollars per year to run and maintain. [Edit: apparently this is not true. DDG does not use Google, though it does use Bing and some other broad and narrow coverage search engines]
  - AdamSC1 11y ago
    DuckDuckGo in no way uses Google. We do use other sources, but Google isn't one of them.
    - melted 11y ago

swampthinker 11y ago

Completely disagree. Lots of sponsored search results are already what I'm looking for in the first place.

falcolas 11y ago
The difference, in my experience, is that clicking on the non-ad result takes me to the company's home (or product) page, which is what I wanted. On the other hand, clicking on the ad usually takes me through several dozen redirects and to some form of ad on the company's site, at which point I need to find a way to navigate to the product page. The usability of ad clicks from Google is usually significantly worse than the organic results, even when they're the same company.