20 ms·
Yahoo, AOL results biased in favor of parent company Verizon’s websites
- empath75 7y ago> Verizon Media-owned search engines have decreased from a market share of 4,10 % in February 2019 to 3,63 % in the United States in February 2020, according to StatCounter Global Stats. 3,63 % of the internet-connected population of the US is roughly 10,6 million people. It's pretty safe to say the only people using those search engines are people who really like aol or yahoo properties for some reason.
- pergadad 7y ago3% of 300 Mio is 1 Mio, not 10 Mio ....
- gabagool 7y ago3% of 300 million = 9 million. That said, the latest figures I have seen predict the US internet connected population to be 293 million [1]. That figure comes out to 10.63%. [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/325645/usa-number-of-internet-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/325645/usa-number-of-int...
- ogre_codes 7y ago> It's pretty safe to say the only people using those search engines are people who really like aol or yahoo properties for some reason. People who use Yahoo/ AOL are people who use those sites out of habit and are happier with the crap experience they get there than learning new technologies. My mom and one of my former bosses were tied to Yahoo & AOL respectively and it was 100% just the comfort of the devil they knew.
- tracker1 7y agoMy grandmother (before she passed) used Yahoo as her homepage and main search from there... It's what I originally put on her computer long before Yahoo got bad, and it's what she stuck with as a result. It was actually painful to see...
- linuxftw 7y agoThat search traffic is probably largely DNS lookup failure spam searches.
- sorenn111 7y agoFor all the worries about tech monopolies and oligopolies, I am always more worried about the ISP's and their power.
- caconym_ 7y agoThem and the ecosystem of data brokers and marketing companies that are invisible to consumers and yet do far, far sketchier things with personal data. Like, remember that thing where cell carriers were literally selling real-time user-specific location data to, essentially, anybody who could pay? And probably still are? I can't conceive of how people can be so angry at "Big Tech" but not at these shadowy fuckers who are doing so much worse things wrt. your data.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 7y agoData brokers are a part of big tech as much as apple and Netflix are. Apple has a more aggressive stance than most companies but even they are pathetically far from being privacy first. I'm a big fan of the proposals to treat all used data as radioactive waste that if mishandled, even accidentally, can destroy entire companies. It is absurd that we're even having these conversations. We're one dictator away from another genocide on the soil of a world leader. China notwithstanding. These vast databases can be misused to quickly indentured entire minority populations in countries. We've gotten a taste of this under trump with the "illegals". If we're unfortunate to find ourselves under an actual dictator trump will pale in comparison. By excising all customer data from companies we prevent countless attacks, and make many other attacks far harder.
- caconym_ 7y agoI agree with you on the "radioactive waste" aspect, but I put "big tech" in quotes to suggest the sense in which lay people tend to interpret the phrase. I'm fine if there is an angry public response to all of it, but if we've going to be selective (only angry at the sexy companies with consumer-facing products) then IMO our selection to date has been suboptimal wrt. effective protection of consumers.
- signaru 7y agoI think the real news here is that people still use these search engines. :D
- Frost1x 7y ago"OneSearch" is completely new to me. I know Yahoo has a decent market in Asia, Japan I believe. I'm always surprised to see AOL mentioned in any context outside of history anymore.
- betamaxthetape 7y agoNote that Yahoo! Japan is separate from Yahoo. When Verizon bough Yahoo, certain patents, holdings and investments were not part of the sale and were spun off into a new business called Altaba. The (minority) stake in Yahoo! Japan that was owned by Yahoo is now owned by Altaba. Probably the only connection between Yahoo and Yahoo! Japan is the name, which Yahoo! Japan license from Verison. source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-yahoo-m-a-verizon-idUSKCN1040U9 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-yahoo-m-a-verizon-idUSKCN...
- BitwiseFool 7y agoSuch an uninspired name.
- d2wa 7y agoIt’s an old codename for Yahoo! Search’s in-house search engine. Back in the day when they still had one.
- dna_polymerase 7y agoI see those on computers run buy laymen who somehow installed one of those nasty toolbars that change the default search to Yahoo or other stuff.
- pergadad 7y agoLots of people tricked through browser toolbars and self-installing "configuration CDs" i guess
- notRobot 7y agoPutting this out there in case folks aren't aware: DuckDuckGo is powered almost entirely by Yahoo!. In turn, Yahoo! search is powered almost entirely by Bing.
- epi0Bauqu 7y agoNo we're not.
- dksidana 7y agoeven on bing ?
- mtmail 7y agoepi0Bauqu is the founder of DuckDuckGo, he will know.
- lostgame 7y agoHa, this is why I love HN. Thanks for the awesomeness of DDG, and if you ever need help with your mobile site, let me know. claire at theoic dot me. I love what you guys do, but your mobile UX leaves a ton to be desired and even some very basic tweaks would go a long way to significant improvement. :)
- wolco 7y agoOn average what percent do most search results served come from bing vs your ddg crawls or any of the other 400 sources?
- Ygg2 7y agoI thought DDG was powered by Bing, like Yahoo. Not DDG by Yahoo by Bing. Color me surprised. Any evidence for this claim?
- zenexer 7y agoThis is incorrect. Per https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...: > ...DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (our crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia, stored in our answer indexes). We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from multiple partners, though most commonly from Bing (and none from Google).
- varelaz 7y agoCould it be that Google is biased? Why everything is biased when compared to Google?
- zenexer 7y agoThey weren't just being compared to Google. They were mostly being compared to Bing. Remember, the underlying data provider for Verizon's search results is Bing. When compared to other Bing-powered search engines, the ordering of results should be nearly identical.
- yellow_postit 7y agoThere's no universal guidelines for (document|query) rankings so the "bias" is always going to be very hard to find a smoking gun for. The appearance of bias in the rankings is a real issue that companies (and regulators?) should care about.
- lhball 7y agoI’m shocked, shocked, to see favoritism going on in this establishment /s
- speedgoose 7y agoI'm quite sure I see Google products and services on top of Google search.
- iscrewyou 7y agoAnd Google gets scrutinized for that. Now it’s Verizon’s turn. It’s good to know what and when these companies are doing.
- IAmEveryone 7y agoBut those are easily recognised as Google properties, allowing you to easily scroll past if you want to avoid them. That's vastly different from selling "organic" rankings, or boosting your own products. As an analogy: Google's approach is like The New York Times printing full-page ads for "NYT Caribbean Cruises" or whatever their side businesses are, while what Verizon is doing is as if The Washington Post ran "12 Great Products Now on Amazon" articles indistinguishable from their articles. To give an idea of how strict the latter would break with tradition: I once designed a full-page ad in the New York Times for a non-profit event. They made us change the design because ads are not allowed to use a 4(?)-column layout. Their own design is also 4-column and they want ads to stand out. The same applies to fonts, colours, etc.
- girst 7y agoAre these results surprising? Probably not. But does that mean we shouldn't talk about them? Because that's what (a portion of) this comment section seems to think.
- SeanFerree 7y agoGlad to hear. I always assumed Yahoo was biased. Wasn't sure AOL was still around since Instant Messenger :)
- chadlavi 7y agoIt is truly terrifying that people still use Yahoo and AOL
- trts 7y agoI logged into my old yahoo mail account the other day and was surprised to find it had some interesting upgrades, such as views for emails containing photos and receipts. It was a fun way to time travel. In fact, except for (or maybe due to) the entirely blank pane on the right that presumably has a bunch of ads blocked, looks cleaner and more appealing than what gmail has become.
- redis_mlc 7y agoYahoo's email client is one of the best in terms of usability. The story there is that Marissa Mayer wanted employees to use it internally, so it got heavily dogfooded and improved. (Yahoo employees were using Google docs and sheets for company use like password lists. lol.) It's worked as your described above for a few years, but they claim to have made speed improvements recently (as it was unusable on low-end devices like netbooks.) The problem with Yahoo Mail is that Mayer allowed a FISA order to install a kernel-level sniffing module on email servers, and I never heard if that was removed (interpret that as a no.) In addition, their network was pwned multiple times, so there's that too. https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/08/reuters-yahoo-email-scanning-done-using-a-linux-kernel-module https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/08/reuters-yahoo-email-scan... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/16/yahoo_forged_cookie_hack_risk/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/16/yahoo_forged_cookie... Source: ex-Yahoo, offered role as technical lead of Mail.
- akersten 7y agoCan someone explain to me how this is problematic? If you go to a grocery store, you will see store-brand items promoted too. They will be cheaper and possibly more prominent on the shelves than name-brand items. They might even be in disguise (e.g. Archer Farms is a Target brand). How is this any worse or wrong?
- intopieces 7y ago"Wrong" or "worse" is usually measured as a product of the impact to the customer, measured in value: that is, when a potential conflict of interest results in a lower cost the consumer, it's usually deemed acceptable. What is a similar measurement for information? Grocery stores only sell physical goods; they don't, for example, determine what medical information you see, or what information about political candidates you consume... those are things that search engines do. So you see why this could be "worse" and "wrong": there isn't a good way to measure the impact and the scope of influence is much larger.
- akersten 7y ago> What is a similar measurement for information? Grocery stores only sell physical goods; they don't, for example, determine what medical information you see, or what information about political candidates you consume... those are things that search engines do. Okay, but that's a different discussion. Google showing Google Maps first instead of Apple Maps on a search for "maps" is not related to the kind of shadowy political subterfuge you're referencing here. I still don't see what's wrong with highlighting your own products to your customers, which is the discussion here.
- d2wa 7y agoThe Apple Maps service doesn’t have a web presence, so they’re not even trying to compete with Google Maps on the web. A map service is objectively more useful than a promotional page trying to sell iOS devices with a built-in Maps app.
- 7y ago
- _bxg1 7y agoThat'd be a problem if anybody ever used them
- 50ckpuppet 7y agoIs the story that this is happening or that people are honestly surprised this is happening.
- IAmEveryone 7y agoIt's not happening at that other, reputable search engine. Of course if you take pride in cynic nihilism, nothing bad will surprise you. But lowering your standards very quickly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You'll get your entirely corrupt politicians, for example. Because the honest ones leave after a few years of being constantly called "corrupt" or "stupid" with zero connection between what they are actually doing and the feedback they get.
- scarface74 7y agoAnd how is this different than Google?
- ummonk 7y agoIf I have a search engine and I create some other services that I believe are better than competitors' services, shouldn't I be putting my other services at the top of search results?
- Ceezy 7y agoThis "study" for sure doesn t prove anything. And fore sure not a bias. How do you know that the other search engine are not bias either?
- magwa101 7y agoNOOOOO How could this be?