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I hate how the ads people confuse as actual results... Stuff like this happens on other search engines too, not just a Google problem. someone I know was looki

by Keverw 7y ago

I hate how the ads people confuse as actual results... Stuff like this happens on other search engines too, not just a Google problem. someone I know was looking for a open source office suite and downloaded one that had adware installed. Same software, but with bundled extra junk, so they just made a new installer and splash page for it. So people don’t realize it’s not the official site but see it as the first result. Then someone was running keywords for a broker for retirement accounts but when you clicked it you got a fake anti-virus wanting you to call a boiler room in India pretending they are from Microsoft. Non tech savvy people including the elderly falls for this stuff mistakenly. I see it as a form of elder abuse. I had to help a relative clean up after that and they had to also contact their bank. I understand advertising is so they can provide free services but I wish advertising was done more ethical. However with ad blockers some news sites want you to pay too, which I don’t really want a subscription for every news site I might see a link to a article for. I used to be against ad blockers but with all this shady stuff I don’t blame people anymore for using them. So don’t really want to pay for things, but wish the ads would more transparent and sites could offer a reasonable priced premium option to remove ads and some extra features. I know people like to hate on Google lately and other big tech, but I feel they have contributed a lot to society and even open sourced a lot of great stuff such as the V8 Engine used by Chrome and Node. I just wish advertising was better and if anything goes wrong actually being able to get ahold of someone for help would be great, especially when paying for stuff. I think at one point the advertisements used to have a yellow background instead of blending in with search results, but that was probably like a decade ago if my memory is right. Seems like every few weeks there's some support horror story with Google, someone had issues with their Google Fi, their Android app on the market, someone recently claimed they were banned from Adwords for using the Apple Card, etc... So I'm a bit conflicted when it comes to companies as I like some things they do but not a fan of others. Same with Microsoft, but they have opened up more as a company supporting open source and Windows 10 looks really great even though I wish it had a *nix foundation under the hood. So personally not a huge fan of Windows, but I sure like Xbox and TypeScript. Even Microsoft Office on a Mac is popular. So I guess I just pick and chose and not really loyal to any tech company. Also I have the React Chrome extension which lights up blue for sites using it, and so ironic Twitter uses React, a technology built by Facebook which I see them as competitors. Tech seems like a weird industry sometimes. But then again the iPhone has parts made by Samsung in it. I guess the same happens in the car industry, where some companies use each others parts. Netflix uses AWS, while Amazon is also offering it's own competing video service.

squiggleblaz 7y ago
> I hate how the ads people confuse as actual results... Stuff like this happens on other search engines too, not just a Google problem. Well everyone hates it. Part of the original understanding of Google's onetime informal motto "do no evil" was that "putting ads where they can be confused for organic results is evil". We can see exactly why here. We switched away from search engines that confused us for Google which, in those days, ran its ads on empty space on the right hand side of the browser. I genuinely hope historians of the future are able to get the early history of Google right. I guess they probably won't; probably, the only documentation is people's memory and that will fade with time. (I assume Google will still be around in some form or another in 150 years.)

by Keverw 7y ago

squiggleblaz 7y ago

> I hate how the ads people confuse as actual results... Stuff like this happens on other search engines too, not just a Google problem. Well everyone hates it. Part of the original understanding of Google's onetime informal motto "do no evil" was that "putting ads where they can be confused for organic results is evil". We can see exactly why here. We switched away from search engines that confused us for Google which, in those days, ran its ads on empty space on the right hand side of the browser. I genuinely hope historians of the future are able to get the early history of Google right. I guess they probably won't; probably, the only documentation is people's memory and that will fade with time. (I assume Google will still be around in some form or another in 150 years.)