23 ms·

Google backtracks on search results design

605 points by saalweachter 7y ago

nerdbaggy 7y ago
Thank goodness. Aside from everything looking like Ads I just really hated the design. I had a harder time extracting data from it when looking for a relevant link.
baddox 7y ago
I’ve been on the test for this design since October 4, 2019, so I’ve actually gotten used to it! But it’s probably a good thing for them to backtrack. I wonder what went wrong in their clearly lengthy experiment about how this would perform.
- t223 7y ago
  Someone was better at persuasion than engineering and got approval to put it into production, ignoring potentially negative A/B test results or flawed feedback methodology.
- tiles 7y ago
  How did you remember the precise date? Impressed.
  - baddox 7y ago
    Searchable Slack logs :)
- agloeregrets 7y ago
  This design is very successful technically for them and I’m sure it increased Ad click through. The issue was cultural. The articles saying “okay this is too far on making Ads hard to see” and the super hilariously ironic fact that they launched this on the exact day that Basecamp went in front of congress to explain how Google is abusing running ads on trademarks, where this design make it much much worse.
userbinator 7y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22107823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22107823 Does this mean they'll also "backtrack" on their destruction of the URL? I was extremely disturbed and horrified when I realised that not only did they replace / with >, but also seemed to arbitrarily remove and rewrite pieces of URLs shown in the results (e.g. all articles from HM would show nothing more than "news.ycombinator.com > item", which was intensely confusing.)
- jonny383 7y ago
  I opened Chrome on a friends phone (first time on Chrome mobile in years) and was shocked to see the url bar is no longer editable. It just gave me a weird context menu with a copy icon. I guess they really want to funnel everyone through search...
  - Arainach 7y ago
    Right next to that copy icon is a pencil - the edit icon.
    - jonny383 7y ago
      Okay I didnt see that. But why is this necessary? What was wrong with the text box that opened what you would expect - the box filled out with the url of the page you are on? In my opinion this is still a gentle push to encourage users to just type in a search query instead.
      - dragonwriter 7y ago
        > Okay I didnt see that. But why is this necessary? Probably because URL copy or share (the two icons besides edit than the new UI provides) are more common interactions than URL editing, and are (without a keyboard and with a traditional text edit control for the URL bar) higher friction; this streamlines the common usecases at the cost of adding an extra tap for URL editing.
ronilan 7y ago
It’s a little meta but I think the way this has unfolded doesn’t shine well on Danny Sullivan and his role at Google. Danny been in the search industry from pretty much the get go, he knows anyone who was anything in search, he “studied the great machine, knows things even Draal doesn’t know” [1], and yet he has been reduced to some sort of an after-fact PR person for decisions it seems he had no say on. Pity. [1] https://youtu.be/dn6sWdxpk90 https://youtu.be/dn6sWdxpk90
Stubb 7y ago
Don't care. Haven't used Google since they put social engineering and ad revenue ahead of search quality and usability When I peek in from time to time, it looks intolerable compared to DDG's clean results.
- supersrdjan 7y ago
  I tried using duckduckgo but gave up after I kept getting irrelevant results for simple queries
  - newscracker 7y ago
    If you wish to retry anytime in the future, you can use the bang commands to search elsewhere whenever the results aren’t satisfactory. I usually start with DDG, then if needed, I move to !s (for startpage) and then to !g (google). This does take more time, but for me it’s worth not having to use Google as much as possible. I’ve also become a bit wary of Startpage after it was recently acquired. There are many other alternatives too, like Searx, for example.
  - sgc 7y ago
    After many tries at ddg, I am using startpage.com since it uses anonymized google results. Still far from perfect, but the best I have found for now.
    - uoylj 7y ago
      startpage was purchased by an ad company last year.
      - karinakarina 7y ago
        Is that your main concern about Startpage? As a Startpage person, maybe I can shed some light on this. Last year, Startpage announced an investment in Startpage by System1 through Privacy One Group, a wholly-owned subsidiary of System1. With this investment, the plan is to further expand privacy features & reach new users. The Startpage founders have control over the privacy components of Startpage. More info - https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/1275/0/what-is-startpages-relationship-with-privacy-onesystem1-and-what-does-this-mean-for-my-privacy-protections https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Artic...
gwittel 7y ago
While I’m glad they reverted, the doublespeak is absurd. As if they didn’t know users would hate it. User experience had nothing to do with this. It was all about revenue. The main question after this is what user hostile move will they attempt next? Without major changes all over the company I don’t see how Google will get better.
- _jal 7y ago
  Yes, it is about revenue, but I bet they honestly were surprised, at least at the magnitude of the pushback. This is a very public embarrassment for a number of people - you don't intentionally risk this sort of thing. The most likely explanation is that they expected people like me to grumble but the vast majority to not mind. They were wrong. > Without major changes all over the company I don’t see how Google will get better. Agree with this. And major changes don't come without major systemic shock.
- hinkley 7y ago
  Don’t they have 100,000 employees that could’ve told them this just as well? You’re right this isn’t about UX. It’s about ego.
  - gwittel 7y ago
    Either many employees did tell them it was a bad idea and they ignored them. Or no one told them. Both ways reflect very poorly on Google. They rolled the dice hoping it would blow over. Government attention was likely the killer.
- bostik 7y ago
  > The main question after this is what user hostile move will they attempt next? We can look back in history and make a well educated guess. It took me a couple of days to figure it out, but we HAVE seen this same game play out. Back in the 90s there was a search engine that started out pretty decent but eventually did their best (or worst) to make ads and search results indistinguishable. It was called Altavista.
- kmlx 7y ago
pieterk 7y ago
When will we realize that adwords and everything it inspired was a wrong turn for the internet? I’d much rather pay a monthly fee to get the services I want. I understand that Google and Facebook have gone too far down this path, and they will say such a service is not as profitable, but ultimately their business model seems unsustainable. People search for the truth, and while you can sell anybody anything, the truth will prevail.
- t223 7y ago
  I’m not willing to pay anything. The internet was built on good will, fun, and generally good intent. Now that it’s a mechanism of commerce it’s attracted the worst of the worst who have no ethics. Ethics courses will be taught in response to bad actors, not in anticipation of. I’m aware the cats out of the bag and all of the high paid engineers need to make a living somehow. I just don’t think it’s about the consumer anymore, if it ever was. It will get worse before it gets better and I’m checking out. I’m an older engineer and going to school for HVAC/R. I plan to do it on the side and eventually start a business. I’m pulling the rip cord. One thing I will say about the blue collar world: they’re better about ego management. Many young engineers I meet are highly paid and treated well, sometimes rarely disagreed with. I can’t help but think that fosters some bad habits.
  - pieterk 7y ago
    I’m so sorry to hear you have such a dark outlook. I totally agree, those companies are not about the consumer anymore, but that’s fine. That’s their problem. I see computers and the internet as an extension of ourselves, and so they still allow us to communicate with whoever and whatever we want. I’m so glad this community exists and we can express that. The worst part should already be over, you just joined hn. I’m also all about good will, fun, and generally good intent. And if you do something cool but it’s costing you something, let me know how I can chip in.
    - Invictus0 7y ago
      This brand of techno-optimism is so tired. Who today still believes the old facebook line about connecting more people? It didn't work and it enabled automated surveillance on unprecedented scale.
burnJS 7y ago
They backtracked for now, but they'll try something else in the next year or so. Their goal is obvious.
- ehsankia 7y ago
  The goal of showing favicons?
  - mthoms 7y ago
    The goal of making ads and organic results look more and more similar.
  - burnJS 7y ago
    Lol, well that one was just ugly. But making ads look like organic results.
- glenneroo 7y ago
  It's even more obvious thanks to Jerry2's "mostly comprehensive history of Google's ad shading and labeling"[0]: https://i.imgur.com/0RxdzBE.png https://i.imgur.com/0RxdzBE.png Anyone want to guess what their next devious attempt to confuse users into clicking more ads? [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22108338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22108338
zxcb1 7y ago
Maybe we need to be bailed out? We're broke on data, privacy and autonomy. Perhaps a 50% nationalization where democratically elected representatives serve on the board? The money can be printed.
- zxcb1 7y ago
  This comment fared better than expected.
- PixyMisa 7y ago
  Universal Basic Search?
callinyouin 7y ago
For me it was the straw that broke the camel's back. When this change went live I decided to switch to DDG and it's been a great experience. Search results are, in my opinion, more relevant and generally of better quality. I wish I would have switched sooner!
- nostromo 7y ago
  I'm in the exact same boat. To be honest, for a long time I'd role my eyes at the DDG users in every thread, talking about how it's hey, pretty good now. Well, now I'm that guy, because I think it's actually better than Google now. It looks crisper, cleaner, has way fewer ads, and does less fuzzing of my actual search terms. I love it -- I'm hooked.
  - philistine 7y ago
    Me too! I get less junky websites in the results.
- kitsune_ 7y ago
  Same here. I wonder whether the backtracking is just due to the criticism or whether they have measured an actual impact on their numbers.
  - pb7 7y ago
    The entirety of DDG’s traffic right now is a rounding error on Google’s traffic. I promise you they did not measure any sort of impact. That may change in the future but we are not there yet.
mrtweetyhack 7y ago
Google is the new Evil Empire
bit_logic 7y ago
It's too late, lasting damage has been done. This redesign made me seriously look at DDG and I'm impressed with what I found.
- tspike 7y ago
  I've set DDG as my default search, but it's frustrating how often I still have to make my way back to G.
  - colordrops 7y ago
    Use !s
- elbear 7y ago
  Me too. So far I haven't felt the need to go back to google. I have found DDG's search results to match my expectations, with a few exceptions.
- joshbaskin 7y ago
  I switched out to DDG as well today. See how it goes. Any takers for trying out Bing?
  - Zebfross 7y ago
    I’ve been using Bing for years with no regrets, but I live in the U.S. (and speak English) where I hear it is best.
    - dx034 7y ago
      Yeah, it really has problems if you tend to search in different languages or look for regional content outside of the US.
  - rahidz 7y ago
    I've switched to Bing for images (more filters and less safe-search) and recipes (so many options!) , but for general search I find their index to be smaller and their results less relevant than Google's.
andy_ppp 7y ago
I’m amazed that Google is essentially late 90s Microsoft at this point. It should be help in the same contempt.
- tempodox 7y ago
  I guess certain stages in the development of a monopoly do suggest themselves rather strongly.
- toyg 7y ago
  Late ‘90s MS was still in ascendancy on merit, technically speaking. This is more early ‘00s MS, all hubris and contempt for competitors.
LaserToy 7y ago
I use google a lot, but I can’t escape the thought that every time I really need to find something (a book which title I barely remember, a product based on the job it does) I just can’t do it using google and that most of my queries are mostly key value lookups. And yes, ads are annoying. Double ads in YouTube are annoying. f you google.
- xiphias2 7y ago
  At least in Youtube I can (and do) pay to make ads go away, which I'm happy to do, as I get a great service in return. I just wish that I could do the same for Google search.
  - SquareWheel 7y ago
    I'd bet that Contributor will work there. https://contributor.google.com https://contributor.google.com
    - xiphias2 7y ago
      I view Google Contributor as a bad product offering, as it doesn't give me any guarantee. Matt Cutts wrote that it works like if I would be bidding with an empty ad, but Google ad system works by CPC, so actually the product should be free in theory :) Google exactly knows my long term value, so it could ask for that amount of money. Also it's for AdSense / DoubleClick, not for Google.com, where ads matter the most.
      - tristador 7y ago
        So my bid just drives up the prices advertisers need to bid to show me ads? Sounds like a win for a company that sells ads. Asking for your "long term value" is interesting, although for users who run ad blockers and therefore never click an ad, isn't their value super low anyway? Imagine Google asking for $50/yr to not show ads, installing an ad blocker, then a year later seeing Google ask $5/yr as your value plummets.
pastelsky 7y ago
Even discounting for the fact the results looked closer to ads, they were also very distracting from an information heirarchy point of view. My eyes first move thorough the colourful favicons first, then the url of the page and then the real content. This flies in the face of good design.
- thomasahle 7y ago
  > My eyes first move thorough the colourful favicons first, then the url of the page and then the real content. I'm not sure this is a big deal one you get used to it. Other search engines also have favicons. My browser tab has favicons. Most internet content (like twitter) has some kind of colourful icon to the left of the text.
The_mboga_real 7y ago
You can always use another search engine..
bronz 7y ago
well AMP was the death rattle and this is the flat-line. Google is officially dead. Another corporate zombie. if you want to be plugged in to new and exciting things, look elsewhere. What a crazy ride its been.
Animats 7y ago
This may be a major event in Google's history - the point where they overdid ads and started to be perceived as a inferior service. This is sometimes called "pulling a Myspace". Myspace was once the top social network. They looked unchallengeable. Then they got greedy. Myspace kept upping their ad content until usage dropped. Instead of backing off the ads, they upped the ad content even more to maintain revenue. Usage dropped further. That death spiral ended with Myspace irrelevant.
- olalonde 7y ago
  I'd say the customizable CSS was worse than the ads (search for "ugly myspace pages" in Google Images).
  - toastal 7y ago
    That was actually the most interesting part of MySpace. Sure, you could get bad designs, but there was an ability to express one's self that you can't do beyond the header image--much like the amateur GeoCities aesthetic we admire. MySpace and GeoCities were why and where I started to learn CSS.
  - IshKebab 7y ago
    Definitely. MySpace was killed because Facebook was superior. And Facebook was superior because it didn't look like shit, people used real names and real photos of themselves, and they did that because it was only available to university students so it was quite a bit more private than MySpace. It didn't really have anything to do with ads.
  - onion2k 7y ago
    There are tens of thousands of people who first learned to code by customising their MySpace page. They might have made some seriously ugly stuff but that feature was amazing for getting people in to the tech industry. It was brilliant.
- hadlock 7y ago
  In the early 2000s we called this "Jumping the Shark"
jophde 7y ago
The original version of Ad Words always seemed ethical to me. Its simply showing users ads for something they were looking at the present moment. Mixing results and ads is bad. We know for a fact the first couple hits are clicked at a much higher rate.
gdm85 7y ago
I think that a constant pressure to optimize this specific aspect (layout) has caused this. However, optimization is not innovation. What are novel ways that search results can be presented to (and consumed by) the user? Where is search going in the future? I am a bit surprised to not see them on top of this game, but at the same time it would be a ripe chance for someone else to give it a spin (assuming that they have a sizable number of users to begin with).
blackrock 7y ago
Can you also tell Google to fix the image search page? The new design is stupid. I prefer the previous design. The new design splits the page vertically, when you click on a picture. And its purpose, which is quite confusing, is to follow a second track of searches related to that picture. But that just makes the usage confusing. I want to click on the picture in order to see it in magnification mode, to have it fill the browser window. This was the prior design. It worked perfectly, and allowed me to quickly see the picture I want, in a magnified mode. But instead, with the new design, it opens the picture on the 2nd split screen, but the picture is practically the same size. And to make matters worse, some of the pictures, like if they are portrait mode, does not magnify, so it makes it very difficult to see the details of the picture. I’d have to open up the source picture in another tab. Someone must’ve thought this was a good idea, but to be honest, it sucks. And also, the split screens with dual scrolling behaviors, is incredibly frustrating to use. Half the time, I’m scrolling on the wrong half of the page. The image search is now such a frustrating experience, that I try to use other search engines for a better experience.
- bufferoverflow 7y ago
  What's much worse is they removed the precise and custom image size search. It's now impossible to search for a 32x32 icon or a 3200x1800 wallpaper. This dumbing down and feature removal is sad and silly.
  - anonytrary 7y ago
    I didn't notice that. I never used exact dimension searches because more often than not, they eliminate all of the interesting results which I would have been able to crop/resize to my desired dimensions manually. It's better to have some results you can transform than to have no results.
    - bufferoverflow 7y ago
      They also had very useful "larger than 4MP", "larger than 8MP", ... options. It was easy to find very high resolution images.
okareaman 7y ago
I just switched to Edge and Bing (Will do DDG in the near future) and I'm not looking back. Edge is very snappy and crisp compared to Chrome. Bing doesn't show tons of ads as the top links. I wonder if Google noticed many people like me switching and became concerned. Edit: Edge operates just like Chrome. Microsoft has made a better Chrome with less memory usage.
- lesquivemeau 7y ago
  Do you use edge because you don't like firefox or because it's preinstalled ? I personally prefer ff but i'd love to hear what you prefer in edge
  - okareaman 7y ago
    I haven't used Edge enough to compare it to Firefox, which I don't use. I like Edge over Chrome. I like Firefox but I don't see how they can compete over the long run against Microsoft and Google.
blazespin 7y ago
How is that facebook gets away with this?
negamax 7y ago
What's a good alternative to Google?
- kevsim 7y ago
  Well since this is HN, the overwhelming majority will say DuckDuckGo. I switched to DDG as my default browser search around 3 months ago and it's mostly been fine. However, when I _don't_ find what I'm looking for, I do find myself popping open Google for that specific search (sometimes finding things I didn't find with DDG). So I guess I don't have full faith in DDG just yet.
  - negamax 7y ago
    I switched to DDG. It seems quite good to me. I am mostly interested in recent events and Twitter Search and news websites is good for that for my needs. DDG is perfect replacement.
TekMol 7y ago
When I click this link, it redirects me to https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=... Which is blocked by umatrix. The Verge seems to cover it with less dirty tricks: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/24/21080424 https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/24/21080424
- tigrezno 7y ago
  uMatrix user here too. The same happened. Totally disgusting from techcrunch.
dijit 7y ago
Defuse, wait, continue.
arendtio 7y ago
Maybe they should simply get back to a design with a yellow background for ads, as they had in 2007 and 2011.
seanwilson 7y ago
Duckduckgo shows favicons in search results as well but nobody complains about it. People should be focusing on how to make Google ads stand out more and not the use of favicons.
- PixyMisa 7y ago
  Check the settings panel. You can configure everything, including the favicons.
  - seanwilson 7y ago
    I like the favicons feature. I meant that favicons themselves aren't what people should be complaining about.
- drivebycomment 7y ago
  Not only that, DDG shows "ads" marker on the far right, making it more difficult to distinguish ads. Also, they sometimes put ads in-between organic results - e.g. show maps first, then show ads, then organic results. DDG and Bing have ads favicon that's in very thin fonts, making it much less legible than Google's black, bold font. There are many valid reasons to switch from Google to DDG, but ads being less clearly marked on Google is not a valid reason, since Google is objectively far more clearer in marking ads than DDG or Bing.
dreamer7 7y ago
For a company that had the least distracting ads for a very long time, this is definitely a questionable move. But, all the hullabaloo in the article about Ad links making money for Google v/s the others that don't seems misplaced. After all, the point of a search engine is to find stuff. And if an ad shows an alternative, that is possibly better, you can click on it. These ad links are definitely not going to download malicious malware onto your devices. I am more worried about ads on social media platforms with infinite scroll because those ads are more unpredictable in placement.
huffmsa 7y ago
Now if Ben Gomes could roll back whatever new NLP models they've recently deployed, that'd be great. Oh and "by date" ranking doesn't work at all in the news tab
blobs 7y ago
2 things come to mind here: A leopard cannot change its spots. Confidence comes on foot but goes on horseback I moved to FF + Duckduckgo engine a while ago, it will be extremely hard for them to win me back.
pdimitar 7y ago
That website refused to open in my uMatrix-enabled Firefox, and didn't open properly on mobile Safari (1BlockerX adblocker). Only desktop Safari (with the same adblocker) opened it. So here's another link: http://archive.is/aRU3O http://archive.is/aRU3O
- read_if_gay_ 7y ago
  that website also contains borderline malicious js making the back button nonfunctional (at least on ios safari). funny considering they felt the need to specifically point out how evil googles strategies are.
BLanen 7y ago
Only slight related: Google's last big search update has been a complete disaster for me. Very naive and arrogant assumptions of the semantics of my search. I can't search anything more than a few words strung together. If you try to search a sentence that you don't precisely know (like a couple words are different) then you're shit out of luck now even though it used to work great. Google is literally becoming worse at search.
- jeen02 7y ago
  Why not give a few examples?
  - tatersolid 7y ago
    Google is now totally useless for any error message from popular software. I was getting an esoteric error from nginx; pasting the long error in quotes to google gave a full page of irrelevant ads with no organic results. DDG and Bing both had a forum post from Igor himself explaining the error as the first hit. This sort of highly targeted search used to work so well in GOOG and now it doesn’t work at all and hasn’t for a while. I moved to DDG a year ago and never even seem to use !g.
RivieraKid 7y ago
Adblockers should default to blocking Google search ads.
40four 7y ago
This has been trending now a few days, but I still don’t get it. Seems nobody can really say what exactly about this design says ‘advertisement’? I get the feeling Mr. Mod’s tweet caught fire because of the sentiment, of Google oppression and dominance, and not many stopped to think what in particular about the design they don’t like. Personally there is nothing immediately offensive to the way the results look. In fact I might argue it’s actually a good esthetic. I like seeing the favicon @ the top, and it does mimic the way mobile search results have looked for a while now. Nobody freaked out about that change? If the anger over this is because people think this is a dark pattern, trying to obfuscate the difference between advertisements, that might not necessarily be wrong. But progression has been happening for a long time now. The picture in the article shows that at least since 2013, they eliminated the different color background that used to highlight ads. So it’s been a good 7 years since ads were nearly indistinguishable from regular results.
- jccalhoun 7y ago
  Totally agree. I can understand that someone might think the favicon makes it look tacky but ads have the word AD next to them. It isn't hard to tell the difference.
  - doublerabbit 7y ago
    Double exposure. Expedia for example, if you searched for "flights" you would get an advert for Expedia and a search result for expedia.com
    - jccalhoun 7y ago
      That isn't new is it? I know that I have seen that for years.
mal10c 7y ago
The new look is annoying, but in my case I'm running a PiHole server. Clicking on ads just presents me with a page not found error. I guess if I really get tired of the new look, there's other options out there. DuckDuckGo is great and I use them occasionally. Bing actually isn't terrible either, so there's alternatives out there. Maybe I'll give some others a try for a while.
room271 7y ago
Okay, Verizon's consent process is a disaster. After following several options to try and opt out I gave up and left. Which unfortunately means I can't read this article.
stevespang 7y ago
Isn't Google just following the lead of all news sites who claim to be reputable, but are burying "sponsored news" or "sponsored BS" on their websites which are PAID FOR by companies and not really news ?
netcan 7y ago
The perspective of this article feel naive for 2020. "You can't put out forest fires by pissing, but if we all piss together... uhm maybe... no wait" Here's what I mean: withering criticism from politicians, consumers and the press over the way in which search results displays were made to look like... .. It’s also a pretty evil by a company whose mantra was “Don’t be evil.” ..paid advertisements are ever more indistinguishable This is like addressing the plastic straw problem on Shell oil rigs. Google and Facebook are both (among other things) more influential over media than Murdoch and the next five runners-up combined. Traditional media obviously also violate their own "journalistic ethics" for money reasons, but at least there is such a code. They teach college courses on it. Google & FB have more influence on things like elections, war/peace & culture, but they don't even have an ethic to violate. Zuch won't even admit that Facebook is a political media outlet, despite being the most significant one to have ever existed. Withering criticism of font choices is so 2007. "Vehement demands for antitrust action" is what we're about in the 1920s.
moviuro 7y ago
If you wish to avoid being redirected to guce.advertising.com when reaching the article: https://outline.com/YEmwdW https://outline.com/YEmwdW You know, GDPR, and otherwise respect of readers. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22019822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22019822
tjpnz 7y ago
What strikes me the most about this debacle is how blatant it seemed. If their intention is to remove the distinction between ads and organic links entirely there are more subtle (albeit slower) ways they could've moved in that direction.
jedberg 7y ago
Good. I recently got dropped into the new design, and for the life of me I can't figure out which ones are ads and which are not. Either I've never gotten an ad with the new design, or they blend in so much that I can't tell.
longtimegoogler 7y ago
I go to bing.com and honestly it is more egregious. I couldn't tell which were the Ads and which were the search results. As a Google employee, I am not a fan of the new design and can appreciate consumers' dissatisfaction with it and will be happy if it is reverted. But, I can't help feel like there is a double standard, here. For instance, Google didn't even opt to bid on the recent giant contract to be the cloud provider for the U.S. Government. Microsoft beat out Amazon for this and there wasn't a peep about it. It seems to me that Google is unfairly targeted in this space for some reason. It makes me question the motivation of some of those pushing this agenda.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
modzu 7y ago
to all the duckduckgo comments: ddg also has ads that look like search results. ublock origin nukes ~5 elements for me on a google search and ~ 8 on DDG. as far as i can see the only real differentiator for ddg is that it returns "universal" search results instead of individualized results (based on location, history, etc). aka, results that are 'private' but also more likely to be less relevant. more than ever the internet is ready for a new search engine, but DDG aint it. we need one that isnt based on f'ing advertising: its antithetical to the point of search!!!
13daug 7y ago
#Awesome I 4it
hncensorsnonpc 7y ago
I have not even seen this in real because I use startpage and duckduckgo on top of ublock that blocks google ads anyway. Its strage to me that not everyone just blocks all ads.
nonbirithm 7y ago
It seems every time Google ruins the user experience for its products, the reason is money. I guess that sounds obvious by now. For example, the the size of the skip button on YouTube ads on Android changed so it only has the width of the seconds counter instead of including the "Skip in N" text. Before you could keep pressing the button before the timer ran out without triggering the ad, if you were impatient, but now you have to be careful not to accidentally click on the ad since the button is so small. Why? Because it results in more accidental clicks, if so many people have the habit of tapping it over and over. Which means more money. At the expense of user frustration or worry over clicking it unintentionally. Look at Dropbox's redesign. They slapped a bunch of completely useless collaboration tools that have nothing to do with my singular use case for Dropbox: syncing files. And that's because, as they say, syncing is a feature, not a product, so they probably had no choice to find new ways to "keep growing" and making revenue or simply die out. Because they can't afford otherwise. But Dropbox was the one company with the capital to fine-tune their algorithm so it "just worked" across network instability and numerous system configurations (until they dropped support for everything until ext4 on Linux at least), so that's what so many people used. I believe that if the only goal was to develop a program to sync files across devices, then everyone at Dropbox would have declared all the extra features unnecessary. But people have to eat. I keep wondering if the limitless pursuit of capital growth is worth the downsides. It can give us things like Dropbox, but ultimately Dropbox is not worth the hassle for me anymore due to the bloat. As a naive question, will there ever be point where we've had enough growing?
- distant_hat 7y ago
  I work for an mobile ad company and we would not consider accidental clicks for billing. I wonder how Google handles it. Advertisers would complain if you got a high fraction of clicks where the user closed the window right away or did not engage with the website in a desired fashion.

605 points by saalweachter 7y ago

Thank goodness. Aside from everything looking like Ads I just really hated the design. I had a harder time extracting data from it when looking for a relevant link.

baddox 7y ago

I’ve been on the test for this design since October 4, 2019, so I’ve actually gotten used to it! But it’s probably a good thing for them to backtrack. I wonder what went wrong in their clearly lengthy experiment about how this would perform.

t223 7y ago
Someone was better at persuasion than engineering and got approval to put it into production, ignoring potentially negative A/B test results or flawed feedback methodology.
tiles 7y ago
How did you remember the precise date? Impressed.
- baddox 7y ago
  Searchable Slack logs :)
agloeregrets 7y ago
This design is very successful technically for them and I’m sure it increased Ad click through. The issue was cultural. The articles saying “okay this is too far on making Ads hard to see” and the super hilariously ironic fact that they launched this on the exact day that Basecamp went in front of congress to explain how Google is abusing running ads on trademarks, where this design make it much much worse.

userbinator 7y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22107823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22107823 Does this mean they'll also "backtrack" on their destruction of the URL? I was extremely disturbed and horrified when I realised that not only did they replace / with >, but also seemed to arbitrarily remove and rewrite pieces of URLs shown in the results (e.g. all articles from HM would show nothing more than "news.ycombinator.com > item", which was intensely confusing.)

jonny383 7y ago
I opened Chrome on a friends phone (first time on Chrome mobile in years) and was shocked to see the url bar is no longer editable. It just gave me a weird context menu with a copy icon. I guess they really want to funnel everyone through search...
- Arainach 7y ago
  Right next to that copy icon is a pencil - the edit icon.
  - jonny383 7y ago
    Okay I didnt see that. But why is this necessary? What was wrong with the text box that opened what you would expect - the box filled out with the url of the page you are on? In my opinion this is still a gentle push to encourage users to just type in a search query instead.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > Okay I didnt see that. But why is this necessary? Probably because URL copy or share (the two icons besides edit than the new UI provides) are more common interactions than URL editing, and are (without a keyboard and with a traditional text edit control for the URL bar) higher friction; this streamlines the common usecases at the cost of adding an extra tap for URL editing.

ronilan 7y ago

It’s a little meta but I think the way this has unfolded doesn’t shine well on Danny Sullivan and his role at Google. Danny been in the search industry from pretty much the get go, he knows anyone who was anything in search, he “studied the great machine, knows things even Draal doesn’t know” [1], and yet he has been reduced to some sort of an after-fact PR person for decisions it seems he had no say on. Pity. [1] https://youtu.be/dn6sWdxpk90 https://youtu.be/dn6sWdxpk90

Stubb 7y ago

Don't care. Haven't used Google since they put social engineering and ad revenue ahead of search quality and usability When I peek in from time to time, it looks intolerable compared to DDG's clean results.

supersrdjan 7y ago
I tried using duckduckgo but gave up after I kept getting irrelevant results for simple queries
- newscracker 7y ago
  If you wish to retry anytime in the future, you can use the bang commands to search elsewhere whenever the results aren’t satisfactory. I usually start with DDG, then if needed, I move to !s (for startpage) and then to !g (google). This does take more time, but for me it’s worth not having to use Google as much as possible. I’ve also become a bit wary of Startpage after it was recently acquired. There are many other alternatives too, like Searx, for example.
- sgc 7y ago
  After many tries at ddg, I am using startpage.com since it uses anonymized google results. Still far from perfect, but the best I have found for now.
  - uoylj 7y ago
    startpage was purchased by an ad company last year.
    - karinakarina 7y ago
      Is that your main concern about Startpage? As a Startpage person, maybe I can shed some light on this. Last year, Startpage announced an investment in Startpage by System1 through Privacy One Group, a wholly-owned subsidiary of System1. With this investment, the plan is to further expand privacy features & reach new users. The Startpage founders have control over the privacy components of Startpage. More info - https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/1275/0/what-is-startpages-relationship-with-privacy-onesystem1-and-what-does-this-mean-for-my-privacy-protections https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Artic...

gwittel 7y ago

While I’m glad they reverted, the doublespeak is absurd. As if they didn’t know users would hate it. User experience had nothing to do with this. It was all about revenue. The main question after this is what user hostile move will they attempt next? Without major changes all over the company I don’t see how Google will get better.

_jal 7y ago
Yes, it is about revenue, but I bet they honestly were surprised, at least at the magnitude of the pushback. This is a very public embarrassment for a number of people - you don't intentionally risk this sort of thing. The most likely explanation is that they expected people like me to grumble but the vast majority to not mind. They were wrong. > Without major changes all over the company I don’t see how Google will get better. Agree with this. And major changes don't come without major systemic shock.
hinkley 7y ago
Don’t they have 100,000 employees that could’ve told them this just as well? You’re right this isn’t about UX. It’s about ego.
- gwittel 7y ago
  Either many employees did tell them it was a bad idea and they ignored them. Or no one told them. Both ways reflect very poorly on Google. They rolled the dice hoping it would blow over. Government attention was likely the killer.
bostik 7y ago
> The main question after this is what user hostile move will they attempt next? We can look back in history and make a well educated guess. It took me a couple of days to figure it out, but we HAVE seen this same game play out. Back in the 90s there was a search engine that started out pretty decent but eventually did their best (or worst) to make ads and search results indistinguishable. It was called Altavista.
kmlx 7y ago

pieterk 7y ago

When will we realize that adwords and everything it inspired was a wrong turn for the internet? I’d much rather pay a monthly fee to get the services I want. I understand that Google and Facebook have gone too far down this path, and they will say such a service is not as profitable, but ultimately their business model seems unsustainable. People search for the truth, and while you can sell anybody anything, the truth will prevail.

t223 7y ago
I’m not willing to pay anything. The internet was built on good will, fun, and generally good intent. Now that it’s a mechanism of commerce it’s attracted the worst of the worst who have no ethics. Ethics courses will be taught in response to bad actors, not in anticipation of. I’m aware the cats out of the bag and all of the high paid engineers need to make a living somehow. I just don’t think it’s about the consumer anymore, if it ever was. It will get worse before it gets better and I’m checking out. I’m an older engineer and going to school for HVAC/R. I plan to do it on the side and eventually start a business. I’m pulling the rip cord. One thing I will say about the blue collar world: they’re better about ego management. Many young engineers I meet are highly paid and treated well, sometimes rarely disagreed with. I can’t help but think that fosters some bad habits.
- pieterk 7y ago
  I’m so sorry to hear you have such a dark outlook. I totally agree, those companies are not about the consumer anymore, but that’s fine. That’s their problem. I see computers and the internet as an extension of ourselves, and so they still allow us to communicate with whoever and whatever we want. I’m so glad this community exists and we can express that. The worst part should already be over, you just joined hn. I’m also all about good will, fun, and generally good intent. And if you do something cool but it’s costing you something, let me know how I can chip in.
  - Invictus0 7y ago
    This brand of techno-optimism is so tired. Who today still believes the old facebook line about connecting more people? It didn't work and it enabled automated surveillance on unprecedented scale.

burnJS 7y ago

They backtracked for now, but they'll try something else in the next year or so. Their goal is obvious.

ehsankia 7y ago
The goal of showing favicons?
- mthoms 7y ago
  The goal of making ads and organic results look more and more similar.
- burnJS 7y ago
  Lol, well that one was just ugly. But making ads look like organic results.
glenneroo 7y ago
It's even more obvious thanks to Jerry2's "mostly comprehensive history of Google's ad shading and labeling"[0]: https://i.imgur.com/0RxdzBE.png https://i.imgur.com/0RxdzBE.png Anyone want to guess what their next devious attempt to confuse users into clicking more ads? [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22108338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22108338

zxcb1 7y ago

Maybe we need to be bailed out? We're broke on data, privacy and autonomy. Perhaps a 50% nationalization where democratically elected representatives serve on the board? The money can be printed.

zxcb1 7y ago
This comment fared better than expected.
PixyMisa 7y ago
Universal Basic Search?

callinyouin 7y ago

For me it was the straw that broke the camel's back. When this change went live I decided to switch to DDG and it's been a great experience. Search results are, in my opinion, more relevant and generally of better quality. I wish I would have switched sooner!

nostromo 7y ago
I'm in the exact same boat. To be honest, for a long time I'd role my eyes at the DDG users in every thread, talking about how it's hey, pretty good now. Well, now I'm that guy, because I think it's actually better than Google now. It looks crisper, cleaner, has way fewer ads, and does less fuzzing of my actual search terms. I love it -- I'm hooked.
- philistine 7y ago
  Me too! I get less junky websites in the results.
kitsune_ 7y ago
Same here. I wonder whether the backtracking is just due to the criticism or whether they have measured an actual impact on their numbers.
- pb7 7y ago
  The entirety of DDG’s traffic right now is a rounding error on Google’s traffic. I promise you they did not measure any sort of impact. That may change in the future but we are not there yet.

mrtweetyhack 7y ago

Google is the new Evil Empire

bit_logic 7y ago

It's too late, lasting damage has been done. This redesign made me seriously look at DDG and I'm impressed with what I found.

tspike 7y ago
I've set DDG as my default search, but it's frustrating how often I still have to make my way back to G.
- colordrops 7y ago
  Use !s
elbear 7y ago
Me too. So far I haven't felt the need to go back to google. I have found DDG's search results to match my expectations, with a few exceptions.
joshbaskin 7y ago
I switched out to DDG as well today. See how it goes. Any takers for trying out Bing?
- Zebfross 7y ago
  I’ve been using Bing for years with no regrets, but I live in the U.S. (and speak English) where I hear it is best.
  - dx034 7y ago
    Yeah, it really has problems if you tend to search in different languages or look for regional content outside of the US.
- rahidz 7y ago
  I've switched to Bing for images (more filters and less safe-search) and recipes (so many options!) , but for general search I find their index to be smaller and their results less relevant than Google's.

andy_ppp 7y ago

I’m amazed that Google is essentially late 90s Microsoft at this point. It should be help in the same contempt.

tempodox 7y ago
I guess certain stages in the development of a monopoly do suggest themselves rather strongly.
toyg 7y ago
Late ‘90s MS was still in ascendancy on merit, technically speaking. This is more early ‘00s MS, all hubris and contempt for competitors.

LaserToy 7y ago

I use google a lot, but I can’t escape the thought that every time I really need to find something (a book which title I barely remember, a product based on the job it does) I just can’t do it using google and that most of my queries are mostly key value lookups. And yes, ads are annoying. Double ads in YouTube are annoying. f you google.

xiphias2 7y ago
At least in Youtube I can (and do) pay to make ads go away, which I'm happy to do, as I get a great service in return. I just wish that I could do the same for Google search.
- SquareWheel 7y ago
  I'd bet that Contributor will work there. https://contributor.google.com https://contributor.google.com
  - xiphias2 7y ago
    I view Google Contributor as a bad product offering, as it doesn't give me any guarantee. Matt Cutts wrote that it works like if I would be bidding with an empty ad, but Google ad system works by CPC, so actually the product should be free in theory :) Google exactly knows my long term value, so it could ask for that amount of money. Also it's for AdSense / DoubleClick, not for Google.com, where ads matter the most.
    - tristador 7y ago
      So my bid just drives up the prices advertisers need to bid to show me ads? Sounds like a win for a company that sells ads. Asking for your "long term value" is interesting, although for users who run ad blockers and therefore never click an ad, isn't their value super low anyway? Imagine Google asking for $50/yr to not show ads, installing an ad blocker, then a year later seeing Google ask $5/yr as your value plummets.

pastelsky 7y ago

Even discounting for the fact the results looked closer to ads, they were also very distracting from an information heirarchy point of view. My eyes first move thorough the colourful favicons first, then the url of the page and then the real content. This flies in the face of good design.

thomasahle 7y ago
> My eyes first move thorough the colourful favicons first, then the url of the page and then the real content. I'm not sure this is a big deal one you get used to it. Other search engines also have favicons. My browser tab has favicons. Most internet content (like twitter) has some kind of colourful icon to the left of the text.

The_mboga_real 7y ago

You can always use another search engine..

bronz 7y ago

well AMP was the death rattle and this is the flat-line. Google is officially dead. Another corporate zombie. if you want to be plugged in to new and exciting things, look elsewhere. What a crazy ride its been.

Animats 7y ago

This may be a major event in Google's history - the point where they overdid ads and started to be perceived as a inferior service. This is sometimes called "pulling a Myspace". Myspace was once the top social network. They looked unchallengeable. Then they got greedy. Myspace kept upping their ad content until usage dropped. Instead of backing off the ads, they upped the ad content even more to maintain revenue. Usage dropped further. That death spiral ended with Myspace irrelevant.

olalonde 7y ago
I'd say the customizable CSS was worse than the ads (search for "ugly myspace pages" in Google Images).
- toastal 7y ago
  That was actually the most interesting part of MySpace. Sure, you could get bad designs, but there was an ability to express one's self that you can't do beyond the header image--much like the amateur GeoCities aesthetic we admire. MySpace and GeoCities were why and where I started to learn CSS.
- IshKebab 7y ago
  Definitely. MySpace was killed because Facebook was superior. And Facebook was superior because it didn't look like shit, people used real names and real photos of themselves, and they did that because it was only available to university students so it was quite a bit more private than MySpace. It didn't really have anything to do with ads.
- onion2k 7y ago
  There are tens of thousands of people who first learned to code by customising their MySpace page. They might have made some seriously ugly stuff but that feature was amazing for getting people in to the tech industry. It was brilliant.
hadlock 7y ago
In the early 2000s we called this "Jumping the Shark"

jophde 7y ago

The original version of Ad Words always seemed ethical to me. Its simply showing users ads for something they were looking at the present moment. Mixing results and ads is bad. We know for a fact the first couple hits are clicked at a much higher rate.

gdm85 7y ago

I think that a constant pressure to optimize this specific aspect (layout) has caused this. However, optimization is not innovation. What are novel ways that search results can be presented to (and consumed by) the user? Where is search going in the future? I am a bit surprised to not see them on top of this game, but at the same time it would be a ripe chance for someone else to give it a spin (assuming that they have a sizable number of users to begin with).

blackrock 7y ago

Can you also tell Google to fix the image search page? The new design is stupid. I prefer the previous design. The new design splits the page vertically, when you click on a picture. And its purpose, which is quite confusing, is to follow a second track of searches related to that picture. But that just makes the usage confusing. I want to click on the picture in order to see it in magnification mode, to have it fill the browser window. This was the prior design. It worked perfectly, and allowed me to quickly see the picture I want, in a magnified mode. But instead, with the new design, it opens the picture on the 2nd split screen, but the picture is practically the same size. And to make matters worse, some of the pictures, like if they are portrait mode, does not magnify, so it makes it very difficult to see the details of the picture. I’d have to open up the source picture in another tab. Someone must’ve thought this was a good idea, but to be honest, it sucks. And also, the split screens with dual scrolling behaviors, is incredibly frustrating to use. Half the time, I’m scrolling on the wrong half of the page. The image search is now such a frustrating experience, that I try to use other search engines for a better experience.

bufferoverflow 7y ago
What's much worse is they removed the precise and custom image size search. It's now impossible to search for a 32x32 icon or a 3200x1800 wallpaper. This dumbing down and feature removal is sad and silly.
- anonytrary 7y ago
  I didn't notice that. I never used exact dimension searches because more often than not, they eliminate all of the interesting results which I would have been able to crop/resize to my desired dimensions manually. It's better to have some results you can transform than to have no results.
  - bufferoverflow 7y ago
    They also had very useful "larger than 4MP", "larger than 8MP", ... options. It was easy to find very high resolution images.

okareaman 7y ago

I just switched to Edge and Bing (Will do DDG in the near future) and I'm not looking back. Edge is very snappy and crisp compared to Chrome. Bing doesn't show tons of ads as the top links. I wonder if Google noticed many people like me switching and became concerned. Edit: Edge operates just like Chrome. Microsoft has made a better Chrome with less memory usage.

lesquivemeau 7y ago
Do you use edge because you don't like firefox or because it's preinstalled ? I personally prefer ff but i'd love to hear what you prefer in edge
- okareaman 7y ago
  I haven't used Edge enough to compare it to Firefox, which I don't use. I like Edge over Chrome. I like Firefox but I don't see how they can compete over the long run against Microsoft and Google.

blazespin 7y ago

How is that facebook gets away with this?

negamax 7y ago

What's a good alternative to Google?

kevsim 7y ago
Well since this is HN, the overwhelming majority will say DuckDuckGo. I switched to DDG as my default browser search around 3 months ago and it's mostly been fine. However, when I _don't_ find what I'm looking for, I do find myself popping open Google for that specific search (sometimes finding things I didn't find with DDG). So I guess I don't have full faith in DDG just yet.
- negamax 7y ago
  I switched to DDG. It seems quite good to me. I am mostly interested in recent events and Twitter Search and news websites is good for that for my needs. DDG is perfect replacement.

TekMol 7y ago

When I click this link, it redirects me to https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=... Which is blocked by umatrix. The Verge seems to cover it with less dirty tricks: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/24/21080424 https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/24/21080424

tigrezno 7y ago
uMatrix user here too. The same happened. Totally disgusting from techcrunch.

dijit 7y ago

Defuse, wait, continue.

arendtio 7y ago

Maybe they should simply get back to a design with a yellow background for ads, as they had in 2007 and 2011.

seanwilson 7y ago

Duckduckgo shows favicons in search results as well but nobody complains about it. People should be focusing on how to make Google ads stand out more and not the use of favicons.

PixyMisa 7y ago
Check the settings panel. You can configure everything, including the favicons.
- seanwilson 7y ago
  I like the favicons feature. I meant that favicons themselves aren't what people should be complaining about.
drivebycomment 7y ago
Not only that, DDG shows "ads" marker on the far right, making it more difficult to distinguish ads. Also, they sometimes put ads in-between organic results - e.g. show maps first, then show ads, then organic results. DDG and Bing have ads favicon that's in very thin fonts, making it much less legible than Google's black, bold font. There are many valid reasons to switch from Google to DDG, but ads being less clearly marked on Google is not a valid reason, since Google is objectively far more clearer in marking ads than DDG or Bing.

dreamer7 7y ago

For a company that had the least distracting ads for a very long time, this is definitely a questionable move. But, all the hullabaloo in the article about Ad links making money for Google v/s the others that don't seems misplaced. After all, the point of a search engine is to find stuff. And if an ad shows an alternative, that is possibly better, you can click on it. These ad links are definitely not going to download malicious malware onto your devices. I am more worried about ads on social media platforms with infinite scroll because those ads are more unpredictable in placement.

huffmsa 7y ago

Now if Ben Gomes could roll back whatever new NLP models they've recently deployed, that'd be great. Oh and "by date" ranking doesn't work at all in the news tab

blobs 7y ago

2 things come to mind here: A leopard cannot change its spots. Confidence comes on foot but goes on horseback I moved to FF + Duckduckgo engine a while ago, it will be extremely hard for them to win me back.

pdimitar 7y ago

That website refused to open in my uMatrix-enabled Firefox, and didn't open properly on mobile Safari (1BlockerX adblocker). Only desktop Safari (with the same adblocker) opened it. So here's another link: http://archive.is/aRU3O http://archive.is/aRU3O

read_if_gay_ 7y ago
that website also contains borderline malicious js making the back button nonfunctional (at least on ios safari). funny considering they felt the need to specifically point out how evil googles strategies are.

BLanen 7y ago

Only slight related: Google's last big search update has been a complete disaster for me. Very naive and arrogant assumptions of the semantics of my search. I can't search anything more than a few words strung together. If you try to search a sentence that you don't precisely know (like a couple words are different) then you're shit out of luck now even though it used to work great. Google is literally becoming worse at search.

jeen02 7y ago
Why not give a few examples?
- tatersolid 7y ago
  Google is now totally useless for any error message from popular software. I was getting an esoteric error from nginx; pasting the long error in quotes to google gave a full page of irrelevant ads with no organic results. DDG and Bing both had a forum post from Igor himself explaining the error as the first hit. This sort of highly targeted search used to work so well in GOOG and now it doesn’t work at all and hasn’t for a while. I moved to DDG a year ago and never even seem to use !g.

RivieraKid 7y ago

Adblockers should default to blocking Google search ads.

40four 7y ago

This has been trending now a few days, but I still don’t get it. Seems nobody can really say what exactly about this design says ‘advertisement’? I get the feeling Mr. Mod’s tweet caught fire because of the sentiment, of Google oppression and dominance, and not many stopped to think what in particular about the design they don’t like. Personally there is nothing immediately offensive to the way the results look. In fact I might argue it’s actually a good esthetic. I like seeing the favicon @ the top, and it does mimic the way mobile search results have looked for a while now. Nobody freaked out about that change? If the anger over this is because people think this is a dark pattern, trying to obfuscate the difference between advertisements, that might not necessarily be wrong. But progression has been happening for a long time now. The picture in the article shows that at least since 2013, they eliminated the different color background that used to highlight ads. So it’s been a good 7 years since ads were nearly indistinguishable from regular results.

jccalhoun 7y ago
Totally agree. I can understand that someone might think the favicon makes it look tacky but ads have the word AD next to them. It isn't hard to tell the difference.
- doublerabbit 7y ago
  Double exposure. Expedia for example, if you searched for "flights" you would get an advert for Expedia and a search result for expedia.com
  - jccalhoun 7y ago
    That isn't new is it? I know that I have seen that for years.

mal10c 7y ago

The new look is annoying, but in my case I'm running a PiHole server. Clicking on ads just presents me with a page not found error. I guess if I really get tired of the new look, there's other options out there. DuckDuckGo is great and I use them occasionally. Bing actually isn't terrible either, so there's alternatives out there. Maybe I'll give some others a try for a while.

room271 7y ago

Okay, Verizon's consent process is a disaster. After following several options to try and opt out I gave up and left. Which unfortunately means I can't read this article.

stevespang 7y ago

Isn't Google just following the lead of all news sites who claim to be reputable, but are burying "sponsored news" or "sponsored BS" on their websites which are PAID FOR by companies and not really news ?

netcan 7y ago

The perspective of this article feel naive for 2020. "You can't put out forest fires by pissing, but if we all piss together... uhm maybe... no wait" Here's what I mean: withering criticism from politicians, consumers and the press over the way in which search results displays were made to look like... .. It’s also a pretty evil by a company whose mantra was “Don’t be evil.” ..paid advertisements are ever more indistinguishable This is like addressing the plastic straw problem on Shell oil rigs. Google and Facebook are both (among other things) more influential over media than Murdoch and the next five runners-up combined. Traditional media obviously also violate their own "journalistic ethics" for money reasons, but at least there is such a code. They teach college courses on it. Google & FB have more influence on things like elections, war/peace & culture, but they don't even have an ethic to violate. Zuch won't even admit that Facebook is a political media outlet, despite being the most significant one to have ever existed. Withering criticism of font choices is so 2007. "Vehement demands for antitrust action" is what we're about in the 1920s.

moviuro 7y ago

If you wish to avoid being redirected to guce.advertising.com when reaching the article: https://outline.com/YEmwdW https://outline.com/YEmwdW You know, GDPR, and otherwise respect of readers. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22019822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22019822

tjpnz 7y ago

What strikes me the most about this debacle is how blatant it seemed. If their intention is to remove the distinction between ads and organic links entirely there are more subtle (albeit slower) ways they could've moved in that direction.

jedberg 7y ago

Good. I recently got dropped into the new design, and for the life of me I can't figure out which ones are ads and which are not. Either I've never gotten an ad with the new design, or they blend in so much that I can't tell.

longtimegoogler 7y ago

I go to bing.com and honestly it is more egregious. I couldn't tell which were the Ads and which were the search results. As a Google employee, I am not a fan of the new design and can appreciate consumers' dissatisfaction with it and will be happy if it is reverted. But, I can't help feel like there is a double standard, here. For instance, Google didn't even opt to bid on the recent giant contract to be the cloud provider for the U.S. Government. Microsoft beat out Amazon for this and there wasn't a peep about it. It seems to me that Google is unfairly targeted in this space for some reason. It makes me question the motivation of some of those pushing this agenda.

deleted 7y ago
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modzu 7y ago

to all the duckduckgo comments: ddg also has ads that look like search results. ublock origin nukes ~5 elements for me on a google search and ~ 8 on DDG. as far as i can see the only real differentiator for ddg is that it returns "universal" search results instead of individualized results (based on location, history, etc). aka, results that are 'private' but also more likely to be less relevant. more than ever the internet is ready for a new search engine, but DDG aint it. we need one that isnt based on f'ing advertising: its antithetical to the point of search!!!

13daug 7y ago

#Awesome I 4it

hncensorsnonpc 7y ago

I have not even seen this in real because I use startpage and duckduckgo on top of ublock that blocks google ads anyway. Its strage to me that not everyone just blocks all ads.

nonbirithm 7y ago

It seems every time Google ruins the user experience for its products, the reason is money. I guess that sounds obvious by now. For example, the the size of the skip button on YouTube ads on Android changed so it only has the width of the seconds counter instead of including the "Skip in N" text. Before you could keep pressing the button before the timer ran out without triggering the ad, if you were impatient, but now you have to be careful not to accidentally click on the ad since the button is so small. Why? Because it results in more accidental clicks, if so many people have the habit of tapping it over and over. Which means more money. At the expense of user frustration or worry over clicking it unintentionally. Look at Dropbox's redesign. They slapped a bunch of completely useless collaboration tools that have nothing to do with my singular use case for Dropbox: syncing files. And that's because, as they say, syncing is a feature, not a product, so they probably had no choice to find new ways to "keep growing" and making revenue or simply die out. Because they can't afford otherwise. But Dropbox was the one company with the capital to fine-tune their algorithm so it "just worked" across network instability and numerous system configurations (until they dropped support for everything until ext4 on Linux at least), so that's what so many people used. I believe that if the only goal was to develop a program to sync files across devices, then everyone at Dropbox would have declared all the extra features unnecessary. But people have to eat. I keep wondering if the limitless pursuit of capital growth is worth the downsides. It can give us things like Dropbox, but ultimately Dropbox is not worth the hassle for me anymore due to the bloat. As a naive question, will there ever be point where we've had enough growing?

distant_hat 7y ago
I work for an mobile ad company and we would not consider accidental clicks for billing. I wonder how Google handles it. Advertisers would complain if you got a high fraction of clicks where the user closed the window right away or did not engage with the website in a desired fashion.