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It's not difficult to understand: Google shows users what other users like, and most of Google's current users favor a small number of major outlets. I can ap

It's not difficult to understand: Google shows users what other users like, and most of Google's current users favor a small number of major outlets. I can appreciate that you may love RC Cola. But it shouldn't surprise you that most gas stations mostly stock Coke and Pepsi products. If you think gas stations need to be more "fair" about which pop they sell, then I'd love to hear you explain how you think that should be done.

zepto 7y ago
Users often favor what is advertised to them frequently. Google presenting particular results influences users. Pretending that Google is merely passively reflecting user preferences rather than actively shaping them makes no sense.
- VikingCoder 7y ago
  Consumers favor sodas that are advertised to them frequently, too. We are where we are, because most users have gotten us there. > Pretending that Google is merely passively reflecting user preferences rather than actively shaping them makes no sense. It has content and advertising just like a gas station does. It's a market. Literally, it's a market.
  - HBKXNCUO 7y ago
    Yup, a market where Google makes editorial decisions about what ads and results they show.
    - traderjane 7y ago
      Isn’t that just like Safeway or the NYT? Except these companies probably exercise way more control than Google, and their customers likely enjoy the curation.
      - HBKXNCUO 7y ago
        I am sure both of those companies do exercise more control than Google, but they also do not have over 90% market share.
      - zepto 7y ago
        It’s just like that, Except that the NYT and Safeway don’t pretend that their product isn’t the result of curation. There is nothing ‘organic’ about organic search results.
  - sonnyblarney 7y ago
    "Consumers favor sodas that are advertised to them frequently, too." A) Information is not Soda, it's not an arbitrary choice B) Soda is also a physical distribution business - Coke and Pepsi dominate physical distribution, shelf space etc. - these problems don't really exist in news, or rather, in totally different ways. So - 1) they are different kinds of 'products' in terms of their civil relation (i.e. we don't care about gossip information), and 2) the businesses are actually different.
  - zepto 7y ago
    It’s not literally a market in any way. But I agree that there are comparisons with a Gas station. A gas station is there for one reason - to sell you what the owners find profitable. What is sold and what is displayed are chosen for that reason only. Google is exactly like this. What it is not, is a responsible organizer of the world’s information or a search service, or in any way responsible to the interests of searchers unless they align with the interests of advertisers.
SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
I guess it would be an open and shut case if Silicon Valley, Google included, wasn't either actively censoring conservatives or if "algorithm mistakes" always happened to apply to them. I'm not a conservative - but I'm not so short sighted to see that censorship could turn around on me quickly. ... Consider this from yesterday, where one of the foremost experts on the field of transsexualism, a major contributor to the DSM-V was suspended from twitter [0] for explaining transsexualism. [0] https://pjmedia.com/trending/expert-psychologist-blocked-on-twitter-for-expressing-clinical-opinion-on-transgenderism/ https://pjmedia.com/trending/expert-psychologist-blocked-on-... If "the algorithm" is ready to block anyone for anything that could be offensive to one group but actively allows threats, doxxing, and attacks on another - you aren't talking about RC Cola vs Coke. It's not at all unreasonable to say that Google and SV as a whole are clearly biased. We don't need more ways to make a bubble, and we certainly don't need Google deciding the narrative themselves. I think the analogy to physical sodas don't really hold up to digital delivery of news. Sodas range has a phsyical limitation, digital news does not, if sodas were a digital resource you would sometimes get to try RC Cola. Try and consider how fast it could turn around on you. Cool, today you agree that coke and pepsi are better than RC Cola. What happens when RC Cola is politically tied to Google's fate and they push that instead?
- VikingCoder 7y ago
  > Google included, wasn't either actively censoring conservatives or if "algorithm mistakes" always happened to apply to them I disagree with your assessment about "always". Frequently Google results are very anti-liberal as well. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/03/joe-biden-parody-website-is-beating-official-campaign-site-on-google.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/03/joe-biden-parody-website-is-... https://www.mic.com/articles/165540/googling-martin-luther-king-returns-neo-nazi-propaganda-why-won-t-google-fix-it https://www.mic.com/articles/165540/googling-martin-luther-k... I can find more examples if you like. YouTube suggests awful right-wing content ALL THE TIME.
  - SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
    You claim falls apart that, joebiden.info seems to have better SEO than the real site. Just because you or I disagree with it, doesn't make it Google pushing an anti-left narrative, it could just be organic. The other article from 2017 doesn't give me the fake MLK result, so does that mean Google DID adjust their search results? Should Google be manually currating results? Sometimes, but I think they've proven they don't draw the line exactly straight.
dec0dedab0de 7y ago
This is completely off topic, but I do love RC Cola. To the point that I buy Keurig Dr Pepper stock (formerly Dr Pepper Snapple co). In many places Dr Pepper and their other sodas are bottled by the regional cocacola bottling company. I don't know if it's fact, but I always assumed the reason it's so hard to find is because Coke refused to bottle RC. Kind of like Apple refusing to let an app in the App store that competes with something they make.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Kind of like Apple refusing to let an app in the App store that competes with something they make Well seeing that for every product Apple sells or give away, there are competing products in the App Store, there is an existence proof that this isn’t true....
  - jimktrains2 7y ago
    There are no other browser engines in the app store.
    - EugeneOZ 7y ago
      Because you can't use any other browser in iOS. It's not AppStore rules. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11259152/chrome-ios-is-it-just-a-uiwebview https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11259152/chrome-ios-is-i...
    - kristianc 7y ago
      No but there is WhatsApp, Fantastical, VSCO, Camera+, Halide, Google Photos, Evernote, Bear Notes, Google Maps, Spotify...
    - scarface74 7y ago
      How does a browser “compete” with a non revenue generating Safari?
    - milhnl 7y ago
      That's for security reasons. Apple doesn't want outdated web engines becoming vulnerabilities.
macspoofing 7y ago
>Google shows users what other users like, and most of Google's current users favor a small number of major outlets. I would say that's partly true. The other part comes from all the flack that Google receives when they include niche or non-mainstream sources (which admittedly are more sloppy or more biased in their reporting). And it is a valid question whether Breitbart articles should be displayed alongside results from CNN or NYTimes or WaPo for generic news queries.
OrgNet 7y ago
It costs Google almost nothing to carry another electronic news outlet, unlike with physical goods (they probably still cache all of them anyways). Very bad analogy. As an example, the cost difference from picking the best result from 1000 sites or 10 sites is probably not very great. It just tells me that Google controls what news that you are able to see and that they are not very objective. edit: of course I am not talking about showing bad results on your prime screen real estate... just choosing the best results from more sources (which is what I thought this article was about).
- maccard 7y ago
  It's not about the cost, it's about presentaiton space. A gas station is limited to one fridge (say), and has to choose what to put there. Similarly, Google has a ~5" device with about 15-20 slots to fill in. The actual cost of buying a fridge/extra slot is marginal, the issue is the attention of the consumer.
  - OrgNet 7y ago
    Of course I was not talking about it in that sense. I meant that for about the same cost, they should be able to show the most relevant results from the best source, and not just a select few.
    - theamk 7y ago
      They are doing that already. What do you think "most relevant" means -- it means "the link that most people want to click on". Now, if I am looking at the google new results, and I see results from bbc.co.uk and "Random Guy's News Site", which one am I going to click? I'd choose bbc.co.uk every time. So they will be marked as "relevant" and will rise to the top, while "Random Guy's News Site" will be marked irrelevant and fall to the bottom of the list where no one will ever see it.
- VikingCoder 7y ago
  It takes up room on the shelf. It's a very good analogy.
cwperkins 7y ago
One of my big fears is the fragmentation of society and a conservative vs. a liberal internet. The echo chamber could be ratcheted up without exposure to a different viewpoint. I understand catering to customers, but I don’t see the cola example as analogous to this. With the influence that google has on search, I think they have a duty to present a balance of opinion to end users and to be unbiased.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  1 - Too late to stop liberals and conservatives from enjoying their echo chambers. (In fact, the entire implication of the First Amendment is that different people should enjoy their echo chambers if they choose to do so.) 2 - Claiming that google influences people to search for "FOX", or "CNN" is as ludicrous as claiming that google is influencing people into searching for "how to kill blacks", or "how to make bombs". My own suspicion is that people decide what they're going to search for long before they come to google. It's certainly not google influencing people to type in certain terms on its famously empty homepage.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- knz 7y ago
  > One of my big fears is the fragmentation of society and a conservative vs. a liberal internet That's already true - consider a site like Reddit and the perceptions of /r/politics compared to /r/the_donald or the insulated bubble you can easily find yourself in on YouTube if you follow the recommended videos rabbit hole. The bubbles can, and already do, exist on the same platform.
dave_aiello 7y ago
Exactly. If some users perceive Google News as somewhat biased, it's likely to be self-reinforcing-- by nature of how Google's algorithms evolved over their corporate history.
stcredzero 7y ago
Google shows users what other users like, and most of Google's current users favor a small number of major outlets... If you think gas stations need to be more "fair" about which pop they sell Not a good analogy. With social media and the desire to exert control over what's trending, it's more like, in the earlier days of 5 Hour Energy, when sales were growing rapidly, gas stations and convenience stores refused to try it out for reasons beyond sales. In reality, they're fairly enthusiastic about trying such things out. In reality, the space next to the register is fairly market driven. “Getting it next to the register isn’t hard. Keeping it there? Very hard. Anything that sells, the stores will try. To own that space is really hard.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2012/02/08/manoj-bhargava-the-mystery-monk-making-billions-with-5-hour-energy/#da06f4227aea https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2012/02/08/manoj-b... Sometimes I see the entire pantheon of legacy media news channels on YouTube presented to me, when it should be obvious that I never click on those links. Funny that.
colordrops 7y ago
I don't know if Google news still has the feature, but when I used it, there was an option to raise and lower weights to certain news outlets. I found it worked less and less over time to the point where the outlets I specifically filtered on didn't even show up. I don't believe this is simply an effect of giving the crowds what they want.
- vatueil 7y ago
  The controls have gotten less granular, and I don't see a way to add new sites to the filters without an article showing up in your results first. But they do still seem to work on personalized news such as the "For You" section. - Blocked sources: https://news.google.com/settings/feedback https://news.google.com/settings/feedback - Favorite sources: https://news.google.com/my/library https://news.google.com/my/library What I have noticed is that the filters don't seem to apply if you click on "Full Coverage" of a topic anymore (via the little icon with the colorful rectangles), perhaps in response to those echo chamber complaints.
code_duck 7y ago
Isn’t selection like this always self reinforcing? It’s like when Facebook or Instagram only shows me certain posts, and I react to those posts because they’re all I am presented with. Then, their logic is that I just love posts like that, and it’s all they should show in the future.
- vatueil 7y ago
  You would use a little randomness to counteract that, I suppose. Like how "heat" is used in simulated annealing.
wolco 7y ago
Many would buy rc cola or water companies not owned by Coke. Coke/Pepsi payoff/threaten to keep shelf space away from anyone else. Drinking Coke/Pepsi is probably worse than smoking short/long term.
kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
In the past year Fox News has been getting much more exposure than they ever did before. They stand out because their headlines are either the direct opposite of the other services in the same topic group or some form of irrelevant rage baiting for their base. I don't want them there and didn't ask for them.
- cwperkins 7y ago
  How do you feel about conservatives ignoring news sources because they’ve been labeled “left-leaning”?
ok_coo 7y ago
You make a compelling argument that Google is biased against new entrants into market(s). How are people supposed to know about these products/services if Google is showing what people already like? i.e. incumbents. They are forced to buy ads! This is just one example why it's so important to show "neutral" results to everyone. The good news is that politicians like Warren understand these issues. Regulation and possibly break-ups are coming.
- cycrutchfield 7y ago
  How do you define “neutral” results?
  - ok_coo 7y ago
    We could start with what they had before they started biasing results based upon user activity. i.e. What search engines like DuckDuckGo do.
    - VikingCoder 7y ago
      People make web pages. Web pages link to each other. Page Rank finds out how important a page is, based on links to it from other important pages. That idea is probably at the core of all modern Search Engines (including DDG). Thus, all modern Search Engines (including DDG) are almost certainly based upon user activity. That being the users who build web pages and links to them.
      - ok_coo 7y ago
        Correct. I guess I wasn't clear. I'm talking about the personalizing of search results based upon search history, search terms, personally and in aggregate. Not based upon the structure of the web itself.
    - traderjane 7y ago
      How is that less biased, as opposed to less personal? Or do you mean that companies shouldn’t be biased to your preferences as a customer?
tucaz 7y ago
I think your logic is perfect. As long as you agree to treat Google as a publisher and not as a platform like it is currently being treated now. Section 230 [1], which in theory was supposed to protect free speech, is actually doing the opposite and giving Google and other major media companies the power to censor free speech and decide what you can see or not. I'm sure the gas station would be held liable if RC Cola made their customers sick and they kept selling it. Google is not liable for anything they publish/display, but still have the power to choose what they publish/display. You can't have your cake and eat it too. [1] - https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230
- liara_k 7y ago
  > Google is not liable for anything they publish/display, but still have the power to choose what they publish/display. Choosing how to respond to a query string is the very nature of what a search engine does. It's utterly impossible to have one without the other. The more charitable interpretation of your argument is that there should be more "neutrality" in the algorithm, but that's also difficult... Should they be neutral to whether or not people are trying to manipulate algorithms with dishonest SEO? Should they be neutral to what other users like? Neutral to who else links to the page? Who decides which neutrality prevails where they conflict? Who decides if a certain kind of neutrality is more important than user preferences or market demands? This is a rabbit hole of mutually exclusive goals and inevitable trade-offs that requires complex judgment. Government regulation in this area would be extremely difficult and troublesome, not just for economic reasons but also for first amendment ones. Free market competition in this area is going to be limited due to economies of scale, so that isn't perfect either. And if you think that imposing traditional publisher liability for search engines is likely to make search engines censor _less_, you might want to think a few steps further down the strategic consequences.
  - tucaz 7y ago
    Maybe we should start with easy problems. I'm not proposing that we have a "fair" algorithm. I think two simple actions would suffice: 1) Google (and other platforms) should stop removing content from people they do not agree with in their platforms. 2) They also should publicize why one result was chosen over the other. That would give users the necessary information to decide if Google is biased or not. Everyone would make decisions based on publicly available information. That alone would make things way more transparent and level the playing field a bit. Unless Google doesn't want that. If that's the case, them they are a publisher and not a platform.
sonnyblarney 7y ago
This is the wrong analogy. 1) "Google shows users what other users like, most of Google's current users favour a small number of major outlets" This is only partly true, and we have no evidence of it. Google can do whatever they want their results and there are surely other factors. What are they? Why do they exist? etc.. There's room for all sorts of bias in there. Also, I suggest it's actually not really true either: 'What people want' is BuzzFeed, HuffPo, Breitbart and TMZ. Unfortunately, that's the reality of the world. 'Most people' read that stuff. They want to know what Kim Kardashian thinks about it. 2) "But it shouldn't surprise you that most gas stations mostly stock Coke and Pepsi products." This is a physical inventory and shelf space problem, google really doesn't have this so much: results can be tailored, represented in different ways, possibly randomized etc.. This situation is a great case for how systematic biases etc. are reinforced.
8347mr 7y ago
That is a logical hypothetical, but we don't know if it's accurate. This provides data about what the gas station is stocking, but we do not have data about what Google's current users favor. It may well be that the users do prefer RC Cola. And setting aside user preferences, the gas station doesn't stock what people want to buy. They stock what will make the most profit. The users may want RC Cola, but by refusing to stock it they may be able to force users into buying their higher-profit-margin Coke.
5trokerac3 7y ago
How can this be true if their top source, by a ratio of almost 2 to 1, is the cable news network with the lowest viewership? CNN doesn't even have a show that cracks the top 25 cable news shows[0]. [0] https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/the-top-cable-news-shows-of-april-2019/401413/ https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/the-top-cable-news-shows-of-...
- jklinger410 7y ago
  Maybe their website has more users than their cable network has ratings.
- cratermoon 7y ago
  Because television viewership != online readership. New flash: people aren't getting their news from TV as much as they used to. CNN's audience being mostly online would be a reflection of that.
  - 5trokerac3 7y ago
    Then why does Fox News outrank The New York Times and The Washington Post on Alexa, but both are represented at a ratio of 2 to 1 to FN in the audit?
- VikingCoder 7y ago
  There are people who use cable news, and consume cable news through cable. There are people who like cable news web sites, and search for them on Google. Let's say for instance that 2/3 of the people who search for news on Google are people who like cable news web sites. Then, by a ratio of almost 2 to 1, cable news web sites will be favored. Rephrased: Perhaps people are actively consuming CNN through the Google searches on the web, and people are passively consuming Fox through cable. Not that it's strong evidence, but consider: "According to Nielsen ratings, the median age of Fox’s audience was 66 in 2016." [1] [2] https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/how-old-is-the-average-fox-news-viewer-in-america.html/ https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/how-old-is-the-aver... https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/heres-the-median-age-of-the-typical-cable-news-viewer/355379/ https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/heres-the-median-age-of-the-...
oldjokes 7y ago
The problem is that gas station is owned by Google and in theory the faceless algorithm that runs everything says all cans are the same but in reality the RC Cola can criticized Sergey a few years ago and keeps making jokes that reveal some uncomfortable lies and you now have to go in the bathroom and climb a ladder to get the RC Cola.
tus87 7y ago
This is fake news. Google openly admits manipulating and censoring search results to promote lamestream media of the left wing variety. Just compare results to duckduckgo and see what you find - what is actually popular online. Google is PUSHING fake news because, like most of the left wing universe today, they just want to take down Trump. Which they also openly admit to.
amelius 7y ago
Hackers drink Jolt cola ...
- dvtrn 7y ago
  You can have my Shasta when you pry it out of my cold, fat, fingers.
DiseasedBadger 7y ago
The problem is that one "gas station" is owned by iHeartMedia/ClearChannel. And if you drive onto their lot worth an RC Cola in your car, you can't get gas. In fact, if they find out that you've ever endorsed RC Cola anywhere ever, you can't get gas.
Theodores 7y ago
If gas stations cared about the customer they would offer totally refreshing natural tap water for free, offering the sugar-drink products as a secondary option. But they don't do that, do they? Google and the rest are pretty much the same. Returning to the soft drinks analogy, why don't they sell RC Cola? They buy cola by the crate and there is a better margin selling a case of the presumably more expensive crate of Coca Cola. If RC Cola retails at 50c and Coke retails at $1 then they are not going to stock RC Cola. The supermarket are in a different situation, they are selling multi-packs and they have their own brand stuff, the RC Cola and the real Coke product for their customers, Coke having the best shelf. If the gas station had demand from customers for RC Cola then they could stock it. However, 50c of revenue would be walking out the door with every sale of a cola-style beverage. Even if RC Cola have better margins when buying at trade that 50c difference is a big one. The supermarket can increase footfall by offering RC Cola at a competitive price, people coming in for it might buy other stuff where the real money is made. With the gas station a reduced price RC Cola offering is not going to increase footfall. Plus gas only has slim margins to it there is no elasticity there. The beverage and candy options are therefore really important for profit. Hence only certain products can be sold, the business cannot afford to stock anything that gets sub-par revenue or put that tap there for people to obtain limitless quantities of wholesome tap water.
la_barba 7y ago
> and most of Google's current users favor a small number of major outlets. With what level of certainty do we actually know this? Sounds like an assumption to me.

zepto 7y ago

Users often favor what is advertised to them frequently. Google presenting particular results influences users. Pretending that Google is merely passively reflecting user preferences rather than actively shaping them makes no sense.

VikingCoder 7y ago
Consumers favor sodas that are advertised to them frequently, too. We are where we are, because most users have gotten us there. > Pretending that Google is merely passively reflecting user preferences rather than actively shaping them makes no sense. It has content and advertising just like a gas station does. It's a market. Literally, it's a market.
- HBKXNCUO 7y ago
  Yup, a market where Google makes editorial decisions about what ads and results they show.
  - traderjane 7y ago
    Isn’t that just like Safeway or the NYT? Except these companies probably exercise way more control than Google, and their customers likely enjoy the curation.
    - HBKXNCUO 7y ago
      I am sure both of those companies do exercise more control than Google, but they also do not have over 90% market share.
    - zepto 7y ago
      It’s just like that, Except that the NYT and Safeway don’t pretend that their product isn’t the result of curation. There is nothing ‘organic’ about organic search results.
- sonnyblarney 7y ago
  "Consumers favor sodas that are advertised to them frequently, too." A) Information is not Soda, it's not an arbitrary choice B) Soda is also a physical distribution business - Coke and Pepsi dominate physical distribution, shelf space etc. - these problems don't really exist in news, or rather, in totally different ways. So - 1) they are different kinds of 'products' in terms of their civil relation (i.e. we don't care about gossip information), and 2) the businesses are actually different.
- zepto 7y ago
  It’s not literally a market in any way. But I agree that there are comparisons with a Gas station. A gas station is there for one reason - to sell you what the owners find profitable. What is sold and what is displayed are chosen for that reason only. Google is exactly like this. What it is not, is a responsible organizer of the world’s information or a search service, or in any way responsible to the interests of searchers unless they align with the interests of advertisers.

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago

I guess it would be an open and shut case if Silicon Valley, Google included, wasn't either actively censoring conservatives or if "algorithm mistakes" always happened to apply to them. I'm not a conservative - but I'm not so short sighted to see that censorship could turn around on me quickly. ... Consider this from yesterday, where one of the foremost experts on the field of transsexualism, a major contributor to the DSM-V was suspended from twitter [0] for explaining transsexualism. [0] https://pjmedia.com/trending/expert-psychologist-blocked-on-twitter-for-expressing-clinical-opinion-on-transgenderism/ https://pjmedia.com/trending/expert-psychologist-blocked-on-... If "the algorithm" is ready to block anyone for anything that could be offensive to one group but actively allows threats, doxxing, and attacks on another - you aren't talking about RC Cola vs Coke. It's not at all unreasonable to say that Google and SV as a whole are clearly biased. We don't need more ways to make a bubble, and we certainly don't need Google deciding the narrative themselves. I think the analogy to physical sodas don't really hold up to digital delivery of news. Sodas range has a phsyical limitation, digital news does not, if sodas were a digital resource you would sometimes get to try RC Cola. Try and consider how fast it could turn around on you. Cool, today you agree that coke and pepsi are better than RC Cola. What happens when RC Cola is politically tied to Google's fate and they push that instead?

VikingCoder 7y ago
> Google included, wasn't either actively censoring conservatives or if "algorithm mistakes" always happened to apply to them I disagree with your assessment about "always". Frequently Google results are very anti-liberal as well. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/03/joe-biden-parody-website-is-beating-official-campaign-site-on-google.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/03/joe-biden-parody-website-is-... https://www.mic.com/articles/165540/googling-martin-luther-king-returns-neo-nazi-propaganda-why-won-t-google-fix-it https://www.mic.com/articles/165540/googling-martin-luther-k... I can find more examples if you like. YouTube suggests awful right-wing content ALL THE TIME.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
  You claim falls apart that, joebiden.info seems to have better SEO than the real site. Just because you or I disagree with it, doesn't make it Google pushing an anti-left narrative, it could just be organic. The other article from 2017 doesn't give me the fake MLK result, so does that mean Google DID adjust their search results? Should Google be manually currating results? Sometimes, but I think they've proven they don't draw the line exactly straight.

dec0dedab0de 7y ago

This is completely off topic, but I do love RC Cola. To the point that I buy Keurig Dr Pepper stock (formerly Dr Pepper Snapple co). In many places Dr Pepper and their other sodas are bottled by the regional cocacola bottling company. I don't know if it's fact, but I always assumed the reason it's so hard to find is because Coke refused to bottle RC. Kind of like Apple refusing to let an app in the App store that competes with something they make.

scarface74 7y ago
Kind of like Apple refusing to let an app in the App store that competes with something they make Well seeing that for every product Apple sells or give away, there are competing products in the App Store, there is an existence proof that this isn’t true....
- jimktrains2 7y ago
  There are no other browser engines in the app store.
  - EugeneOZ 7y ago
    Because you can't use any other browser in iOS. It's not AppStore rules. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11259152/chrome-ios-is-it-just-a-uiwebview https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11259152/chrome-ios-is-i...
  - kristianc 7y ago
    No but there is WhatsApp, Fantastical, VSCO, Camera+, Halide, Google Photos, Evernote, Bear Notes, Google Maps, Spotify...
  - scarface74 7y ago
    How does a browser “compete” with a non revenue generating Safari?
  - milhnl 7y ago
    That's for security reasons. Apple doesn't want outdated web engines becoming vulnerabilities.

macspoofing 7y ago

>Google shows users what other users like, and most of Google's current users favor a small number of major outlets. I would say that's partly true. The other part comes from all the flack that Google receives when they include niche or non-mainstream sources (which admittedly are more sloppy or more biased in their reporting). And it is a valid question whether Breitbart articles should be displayed alongside results from CNN or NYTimes or WaPo for generic news queries.

OrgNet 7y ago

It costs Google almost nothing to carry another electronic news outlet, unlike with physical goods (they probably still cache all of them anyways). Very bad analogy. As an example, the cost difference from picking the best result from 1000 sites or 10 sites is probably not very great. It just tells me that Google controls what news that you are able to see and that they are not very objective. edit: of course I am not talking about showing bad results on your prime screen real estate... just choosing the best results from more sources (which is what I thought this article was about).

maccard 7y ago
It's not about the cost, it's about presentaiton space. A gas station is limited to one fridge (say), and has to choose what to put there. Similarly, Google has a ~5" device with about 15-20 slots to fill in. The actual cost of buying a fridge/extra slot is marginal, the issue is the attention of the consumer.
- OrgNet 7y ago
  Of course I was not talking about it in that sense. I meant that for about the same cost, they should be able to show the most relevant results from the best source, and not just a select few.
  - theamk 7y ago
    They are doing that already. What do you think "most relevant" means -- it means "the link that most people want to click on". Now, if I am looking at the google new results, and I see results from bbc.co.uk and "Random Guy's News Site", which one am I going to click? I'd choose bbc.co.uk every time. So they will be marked as "relevant" and will rise to the top, while "Random Guy's News Site" will be marked irrelevant and fall to the bottom of the list where no one will ever see it.
VikingCoder 7y ago
It takes up room on the shelf. It's a very good analogy.

cwperkins 7y ago

One of my big fears is the fragmentation of society and a conservative vs. a liberal internet. The echo chamber could be ratcheted up without exposure to a different viewpoint. I understand catering to customers, but I don’t see the cola example as analogous to this. With the influence that google has on search, I think they have a duty to present a balance of opinion to end users and to be unbiased.

bilbo0s 7y ago
1 - Too late to stop liberals and conservatives from enjoying their echo chambers. (In fact, the entire implication of the First Amendment is that different people should enjoy their echo chambers if they choose to do so.) 2 - Claiming that google influences people to search for "FOX", or "CNN" is as ludicrous as claiming that google is influencing people into searching for "how to kill blacks", or "how to make bombs". My own suspicion is that people decide what they're going to search for long before they come to google. It's certainly not google influencing people to type in certain terms on its famously empty homepage.
- deleted 7y ago
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knz 7y ago
> One of my big fears is the fragmentation of society and a conservative vs. a liberal internet That's already true - consider a site like Reddit and the perceptions of /r/politics compared to /r/the_donald or the insulated bubble you can easily find yourself in on YouTube if you follow the recommended videos rabbit hole. The bubbles can, and already do, exist on the same platform.

dave_aiello 7y ago

Exactly. If some users perceive Google News as somewhat biased, it's likely to be self-reinforcing-- by nature of how Google's algorithms evolved over their corporate history.

stcredzero 7y ago

Google shows users what other users like, and most of Google's current users favor a small number of major outlets... If you think gas stations need to be more "fair" about which pop they sell Not a good analogy. With social media and the desire to exert control over what's trending, it's more like, in the earlier days of 5 Hour Energy, when sales were growing rapidly, gas stations and convenience stores refused to try it out for reasons beyond sales. In reality, they're fairly enthusiastic about trying such things out. In reality, the space next to the register is fairly market driven. “Getting it next to the register isn’t hard. Keeping it there? Very hard. Anything that sells, the stores will try. To own that space is really hard.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2012/02/08/manoj-bhargava-the-mystery-monk-making-billions-with-5-hour-energy/#da06f4227aea https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2012/02/08/manoj-b... Sometimes I see the entire pantheon of legacy media news channels on YouTube presented to me, when it should be obvious that I never click on those links. Funny that.

colordrops 7y ago

I don't know if Google news still has the feature, but when I used it, there was an option to raise and lower weights to certain news outlets. I found it worked less and less over time to the point where the outlets I specifically filtered on didn't even show up. I don't believe this is simply an effect of giving the crowds what they want.

vatueil 7y ago
The controls have gotten less granular, and I don't see a way to add new sites to the filters without an article showing up in your results first. But they do still seem to work on personalized news such as the "For You" section. - Blocked sources: https://news.google.com/settings/feedback https://news.google.com/settings/feedback - Favorite sources: https://news.google.com/my/library https://news.google.com/my/library What I have noticed is that the filters don't seem to apply if you click on "Full Coverage" of a topic anymore (via the little icon with the colorful rectangles), perhaps in response to those echo chamber complaints.

code_duck 7y ago

Isn’t selection like this always self reinforcing? It’s like when Facebook or Instagram only shows me certain posts, and I react to those posts because they’re all I am presented with. Then, their logic is that I just love posts like that, and it’s all they should show in the future.

vatueil 7y ago
You would use a little randomness to counteract that, I suppose. Like how "heat" is used in simulated annealing.

wolco 7y ago

Many would buy rc cola or water companies not owned by Coke. Coke/Pepsi payoff/threaten to keep shelf space away from anyone else. Drinking Coke/Pepsi is probably worse than smoking short/long term.

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago

In the past year Fox News has been getting much more exposure than they ever did before. They stand out because their headlines are either the direct opposite of the other services in the same topic group or some form of irrelevant rage baiting for their base. I don't want them there and didn't ask for them.

cwperkins 7y ago
How do you feel about conservatives ignoring news sources because they’ve been labeled “left-leaning”?

ok_coo 7y ago

You make a compelling argument that Google is biased against new entrants into market(s). How are people supposed to know about these products/services if Google is showing what people already like? i.e. incumbents. They are forced to buy ads! This is just one example why it's so important to show "neutral" results to everyone. The good news is that politicians like Warren understand these issues. Regulation and possibly break-ups are coming.

cycrutchfield 7y ago
How do you define “neutral” results?
- ok_coo 7y ago
  We could start with what they had before they started biasing results based upon user activity. i.e. What search engines like DuckDuckGo do.
  - VikingCoder 7y ago
    People make web pages. Web pages link to each other. Page Rank finds out how important a page is, based on links to it from other important pages. That idea is probably at the core of all modern Search Engines (including DDG). Thus, all modern Search Engines (including DDG) are almost certainly based upon user activity. That being the users who build web pages and links to them.
    - ok_coo 7y ago
      Correct. I guess I wasn't clear. I'm talking about the personalizing of search results based upon search history, search terms, personally and in aggregate. Not based upon the structure of the web itself.
  - traderjane 7y ago
    How is that less biased, as opposed to less personal? Or do you mean that companies shouldn’t be biased to your preferences as a customer?

tucaz 7y ago

I think your logic is perfect. As long as you agree to treat Google as a publisher and not as a platform like it is currently being treated now. Section 230 [1], which in theory was supposed to protect free speech, is actually doing the opposite and giving Google and other major media companies the power to censor free speech and decide what you can see or not. I'm sure the gas station would be held liable if RC Cola made their customers sick and they kept selling it. Google is not liable for anything they publish/display, but still have the power to choose what they publish/display. You can't have your cake and eat it too. [1] - https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230

liara_k 7y ago
> Google is not liable for anything they publish/display, but still have the power to choose what they publish/display. Choosing how to respond to a query string is the very nature of what a search engine does. It's utterly impossible to have one without the other. The more charitable interpretation of your argument is that there should be more "neutrality" in the algorithm, but that's also difficult... Should they be neutral to whether or not people are trying to manipulate algorithms with dishonest SEO? Should they be neutral to what other users like? Neutral to who else links to the page? Who decides which neutrality prevails where they conflict? Who decides if a certain kind of neutrality is more important than user preferences or market demands? This is a rabbit hole of mutually exclusive goals and inevitable trade-offs that requires complex judgment. Government regulation in this area would be extremely difficult and troublesome, not just for economic reasons but also for first amendment ones. Free market competition in this area is going to be limited due to economies of scale, so that isn't perfect either. And if you think that imposing traditional publisher liability for search engines is likely to make search engines censor _less_, you might want to think a few steps further down the strategic consequences.
- tucaz 7y ago
  Maybe we should start with easy problems. I'm not proposing that we have a "fair" algorithm. I think two simple actions would suffice: 1) Google (and other platforms) should stop removing content from people they do not agree with in their platforms. 2) They also should publicize why one result was chosen over the other. That would give users the necessary information to decide if Google is biased or not. Everyone would make decisions based on publicly available information. That alone would make things way more transparent and level the playing field a bit. Unless Google doesn't want that. If that's the case, them they are a publisher and not a platform.

sonnyblarney 7y ago

This is the wrong analogy. 1) "Google shows users what other users like, most of Google's current users favour a small number of major outlets" This is only partly true, and we have no evidence of it. Google can do whatever they want their results and there are surely other factors. What are they? Why do they exist? etc.. There's room for all sorts of bias in there. Also, I suggest it's actually not really true either: 'What people want' is BuzzFeed, HuffPo, Breitbart and TMZ. Unfortunately, that's the reality of the world. 'Most people' read that stuff. They want to know what Kim Kardashian thinks about it. 2) "But it shouldn't surprise you that most gas stations mostly stock Coke and Pepsi products." This is a physical inventory and shelf space problem, google really doesn't have this so much: results can be tailored, represented in different ways, possibly randomized etc.. This situation is a great case for how systematic biases etc. are reinforced.

8347mr 7y ago

That is a logical hypothetical, but we don't know if it's accurate. This provides data about what the gas station is stocking, but we do not have data about what Google's current users favor. It may well be that the users do prefer RC Cola. And setting aside user preferences, the gas station doesn't stock what people want to buy. They stock what will make the most profit. The users may want RC Cola, but by refusing to stock it they may be able to force users into buying their higher-profit-margin Coke.

5trokerac3 7y ago

How can this be true if their top source, by a ratio of almost 2 to 1, is the cable news network with the lowest viewership? CNN doesn't even have a show that cracks the top 25 cable news shows[0]. [0] https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/the-top-cable-news-shows-of-april-2019/401413/ https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/the-top-cable-news-shows-of-...

jklinger410 7y ago
Maybe their website has more users than their cable network has ratings.
cratermoon 7y ago
Because television viewership != online readership. New flash: people aren't getting their news from TV as much as they used to. CNN's audience being mostly online would be a reflection of that.
- 5trokerac3 7y ago
  Then why does Fox News outrank The New York Times and The Washington Post on Alexa, but both are represented at a ratio of 2 to 1 to FN in the audit?
VikingCoder 7y ago
There are people who use cable news, and consume cable news through cable. There are people who like cable news web sites, and search for them on Google. Let's say for instance that 2/3 of the people who search for news on Google are people who like cable news web sites. Then, by a ratio of almost 2 to 1, cable news web sites will be favored. Rephrased: Perhaps people are actively consuming CNN through the Google searches on the web, and people are passively consuming Fox through cable. Not that it's strong evidence, but consider: "According to Nielsen ratings, the median age of Fox’s audience was 66 in 2016." [1] [2] https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/how-old-is-the-average-fox-news-viewer-in-america.html/ https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/how-old-is-the-aver... https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/heres-the-median-age-of-the-typical-cable-news-viewer/355379/ https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/heres-the-median-age-of-the-...

oldjokes 7y ago

The problem is that gas station is owned by Google and in theory the faceless algorithm that runs everything says all cans are the same but in reality the RC Cola can criticized Sergey a few years ago and keeps making jokes that reveal some uncomfortable lies and you now have to go in the bathroom and climb a ladder to get the RC Cola.

tus87 7y ago

This is fake news. Google openly admits manipulating and censoring search results to promote lamestream media of the left wing variety. Just compare results to duckduckgo and see what you find - what is actually popular online. Google is PUSHING fake news because, like most of the left wing universe today, they just want to take down Trump. Which they also openly admit to.

amelius 7y ago

Hackers drink Jolt cola ...

dvtrn 7y ago
You can have my Shasta when you pry it out of my cold, fat, fingers.

DiseasedBadger 7y ago

The problem is that one "gas station" is owned by iHeartMedia/ClearChannel. And if you drive onto their lot worth an RC Cola in your car, you can't get gas. In fact, if they find out that you've ever endorsed RC Cola anywhere ever, you can't get gas.

Theodores 7y ago

If gas stations cared about the customer they would offer totally refreshing natural tap water for free, offering the sugar-drink products as a secondary option. But they don't do that, do they? Google and the rest are pretty much the same. Returning to the soft drinks analogy, why don't they sell RC Cola? They buy cola by the crate and there is a better margin selling a case of the presumably more expensive crate of Coca Cola. If RC Cola retails at 50c and Coke retails at $1 then they are not going to stock RC Cola. The supermarket are in a different situation, they are selling multi-packs and they have their own brand stuff, the RC Cola and the real Coke product for their customers, Coke having the best shelf. If the gas station had demand from customers for RC Cola then they could stock it. However, 50c of revenue would be walking out the door with every sale of a cola-style beverage. Even if RC Cola have better margins when buying at trade that 50c difference is a big one. The supermarket can increase footfall by offering RC Cola at a competitive price, people coming in for it might buy other stuff where the real money is made. With the gas station a reduced price RC Cola offering is not going to increase footfall. Plus gas only has slim margins to it there is no elasticity there. The beverage and candy options are therefore really important for profit. Hence only certain products can be sold, the business cannot afford to stock anything that gets sub-par revenue or put that tap there for people to obtain limitless quantities of wholesome tap water.

la_barba 7y ago

> and most of Google's current users favor a small number of major outlets. With what level of certainty do we actually know this? Sounds like an assumption to me.