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This. I think the belief that Google wasn't evil and is losing its way come from people not wanting to accept they'd been duped. The company was always evil. It

This. I think the belief that Google wasn't evil and is losing its way come from people not wanting to accept they'd been duped. The company was always evil. It was always built around selling your attention to advertisers who want you to buy things. And ad clicks have always been more important than quality search results. As ad blockers have become popular and the demand for continual growth has remained steady, the costs they accepted to hide their evil were the first expense to get cut.

shadowgovt 7y ago
I think it's worse than that. I think "Don't be evil" implied that the company sought to avoid taking its highly-trained technical talent and applying them to the job of, say, weapons systems. In that sense, they weren't evil; attention shifting isn't nearly as bad as drone targeting. ... but if the money isn't there in ads in the future, I don't expect the company to just curl up and die. It'll be interesting to see what comes next when "The smartest people" need to find something to do.
- bjornjaja 7y ago
  Smart people gravitate to AI like a magnet. Or completely tangential things like starting a bakery, restaurant, etc. We’re all going to be left in a Wall-E universe though unless they help fight climate change.
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    I think you're right on the AI, and I think Google agrees. https://ai.google/ https://ai.google/ Problem is, while there's certainly money in applications of AI (the ad auction is one of them), it's unclear that "AI" as a discipline is a money-factory like ads is. Google's looking for a money factory to replace ads because they're worried about that revenue stream being fragile (for the reasons ocdtrekkie highlighted).
  - Filligree 7y ago
    Fight climate change? How? "The smart people" provided a recipe for preventing/fixing climate change several decades ago. The politicians have never gone along, and now it's pretty much too late. It's no use hoping for a magic technical solution -- the one that would have worked was "Tax externalities and reduce CO2 emission".
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      "the one that would have worked was "Tax externalities and reduce CO2 emission"." Why? Internalizing externalities with a tax only works if the actual correct amount of those externalities equals or exceeds the amount that would reduce demand for fuel enough to stop climate change. This is a huge assumption that I never see anyone even acknowledge needs to be demonstrated. I think in fact they are far less, but my point is that debating that would be a red herring, since people seem to talk of externalities while never even believing in the concept, and that tension needs to be resolved. The externalities are a number that in principle has a correct value, and the increase in price to change behavior sufficiently to stop warming is another number that independently has a certain value. But you have to have a logical reason for thinking they match if you think internalizing the costs is a solution.
    - bjornjaja 7y ago
      Mother Earth has a magical technical solution. It’s called a “hard reset” so hopefully we can come up with something better.
  - Rerarom 7y ago
    I am smart and I find AI as it is currently practiced utterly boring (always did, ever since my first course on neural networks back in university). I think I am not alone here.
    - bjornjaja 7y ago
      Have you thought of potential ways to use AI to help some problem domain you’re interested in? Like maths and other sciences it’s important to have an interesting application that you can get behind. It’s just a tool after all.
- mjparrott 7y ago
  I'd say creating the surveillance state is on par with weapons systems, drones, etc. The fact that every American is spied on (I know they accepted the T&Cs) and has zero privacy anymore is not "don't be evil".
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    Not if the people actually ask for it. Adoption shows people want the features the "surveillance state" empowers. A definition that calls that evil also calls auto manufacturers evil because of the car accident rate.
- JackRabbitSlim 7y ago
  Sure; In the same way that a pediatrician would have the slogan "Don't diddle kids." If you need a slogan like that, there is already a problem. Eventually, as we saw, they couldn't help themselves -- Maybe just one little oppression platform wouldn't be such a big deal...
CWuestefeld 7y ago
ad clicks have always been more important than quality search results Whatever else you might think about what Google is doing, this is certainly not true. Google gained dominance precisely because its search results were vastly superior to any other. I was a web developer even back then, and clearly remember trying to struggle with the results of Yahoo or AltaVista or DogPile, etc. There's just no question that Google won because of higher quality results. And at that time there was also a lot of controversy about their competitors selling search positions, so you could outright buy the #1 slot, for example. Google never did this, and always maintained a policy of maintaining a clear distinction between organic results versus ads. The line may have become less bright over time, but it's always been possible to discern which items on the results page were "real" and which weren't. You can criticize them for having decreasing commitment so they're not as bold about the ideals, but I don't think it's fair to say that they never cared, or even that they don't care anymore.
- the_duke 7y ago
  > always maintained a policy of maintaining a clear distinction between organic results versus ads I would not call a tiny label saying "Ad", with the same color as the text right next to it, a clear distinction. When using a browser without an ad blocker, I often click on ads by accident. It's very far from the clearly distinguishable background that ads used to have, and designed to be easily overlooked.
- givinguflac 7y ago
  Google literally sells the top spots on results pages to advertisers. Come on. A little notation many will ignore doesn’t make it not a sale of the top spot.
- shantly 7y ago
  > And at that time there was also a lot of controversy about their competitors selling search positions, so you could outright buy the #1 slot, for example. Google never did this, and always maintained a policy of maintaining a clear distinction between organic results versus ads. The line may have become less bright over time, but it's always been possible to discern which items on the results page were "real" and which weren't. They do exactly that on mobile, and if you watch non-geeks use Google they cannot reliably spot the ad versus the "natural" results. Hell, I tap the ad about half the time, because I'm in a hurry and don't look closely enough, and they've extorted the owner of whatever company I'm searching for to pay for their own name so the top result is an ad for the thing I obviously wanted to find anyway.

shadowgovt 7y ago

I think it's worse than that. I think "Don't be evil" implied that the company sought to avoid taking its highly-trained technical talent and applying them to the job of, say, weapons systems. In that sense, they weren't evil; attention shifting isn't nearly as bad as drone targeting. ... but if the money isn't there in ads in the future, I don't expect the company to just curl up and die. It'll be interesting to see what comes next when "The smartest people" need to find something to do.

bjornjaja 7y ago
Smart people gravitate to AI like a magnet. Or completely tangential things like starting a bakery, restaurant, etc. We’re all going to be left in a Wall-E universe though unless they help fight climate change.
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  I think you're right on the AI, and I think Google agrees. https://ai.google/ https://ai.google/ Problem is, while there's certainly money in applications of AI (the ad auction is one of them), it's unclear that "AI" as a discipline is a money-factory like ads is. Google's looking for a money factory to replace ads because they're worried about that revenue stream being fragile (for the reasons ocdtrekkie highlighted).
- Filligree 7y ago
  Fight climate change? How? "The smart people" provided a recipe for preventing/fixing climate change several decades ago. The politicians have never gone along, and now it's pretty much too late. It's no use hoping for a magic technical solution -- the one that would have worked was "Tax externalities and reduce CO2 emission".
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    "the one that would have worked was "Tax externalities and reduce CO2 emission"." Why? Internalizing externalities with a tax only works if the actual correct amount of those externalities equals or exceeds the amount that would reduce demand for fuel enough to stop climate change. This is a huge assumption that I never see anyone even acknowledge needs to be demonstrated. I think in fact they are far less, but my point is that debating that would be a red herring, since people seem to talk of externalities while never even believing in the concept, and that tension needs to be resolved. The externalities are a number that in principle has a correct value, and the increase in price to change behavior sufficiently to stop warming is another number that independently has a certain value. But you have to have a logical reason for thinking they match if you think internalizing the costs is a solution.
  - bjornjaja 7y ago
    Mother Earth has a magical technical solution. It’s called a “hard reset” so hopefully we can come up with something better.
- Rerarom 7y ago
  I am smart and I find AI as it is currently practiced utterly boring (always did, ever since my first course on neural networks back in university). I think I am not alone here.
  - bjornjaja 7y ago
    Have you thought of potential ways to use AI to help some problem domain you’re interested in? Like maths and other sciences it’s important to have an interesting application that you can get behind. It’s just a tool after all.
mjparrott 7y ago
I'd say creating the surveillance state is on par with weapons systems, drones, etc. The fact that every American is spied on (I know they accepted the T&Cs) and has zero privacy anymore is not "don't be evil".
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  Not if the people actually ask for it. Adoption shows people want the features the "surveillance state" empowers. A definition that calls that evil also calls auto manufacturers evil because of the car accident rate.
JackRabbitSlim 7y ago
Sure; In the same way that a pediatrician would have the slogan "Don't diddle kids." If you need a slogan like that, there is already a problem. Eventually, as we saw, they couldn't help themselves -- Maybe just one little oppression platform wouldn't be such a big deal...

CWuestefeld 7y ago

ad clicks have always been more important than quality search results Whatever else you might think about what Google is doing, this is certainly not true. Google gained dominance precisely because its search results were vastly superior to any other. I was a web developer even back then, and clearly remember trying to struggle with the results of Yahoo or AltaVista or DogPile, etc. There's just no question that Google won because of higher quality results. And at that time there was also a lot of controversy about their competitors selling search positions, so you could outright buy the #1 slot, for example. Google never did this, and always maintained a policy of maintaining a clear distinction between organic results versus ads. The line may have become less bright over time, but it's always been possible to discern which items on the results page were "real" and which weren't. You can criticize them for having decreasing commitment so they're not as bold about the ideals, but I don't think it's fair to say that they never cared, or even that they don't care anymore.

the_duke 7y ago
> always maintained a policy of maintaining a clear distinction between organic results versus ads I would not call a tiny label saying "Ad", with the same color as the text right next to it, a clear distinction. When using a browser without an ad blocker, I often click on ads by accident. It's very far from the clearly distinguishable background that ads used to have, and designed to be easily overlooked.
givinguflac 7y ago
Google literally sells the top spots on results pages to advertisers. Come on. A little notation many will ignore doesn’t make it not a sale of the top spot.
shantly 7y ago
> And at that time there was also a lot of controversy about their competitors selling search positions, so you could outright buy the #1 slot, for example. Google never did this, and always maintained a policy of maintaining a clear distinction between organic results versus ads. The line may have become less bright over time, but it's always been possible to discern which items on the results page were "real" and which weren't. They do exactly that on mobile, and if you watch non-geeks use Google they cannot reliably spot the ad versus the "natural" results. Hell, I tap the ad about half the time, because I'm in a hurry and don't look closely enough, and they've extorted the owner of whatever company I'm searching for to pay for their own name so the top result is an ad for the thing I obviously wanted to find anyway.