8 ms·

As the article points out, the problem isn't specifically that this harms Wikipedia, it's that this practice harms pretty much every for profit business that Go

by nend 6y ago

As the article points out, the problem isn't specifically that this harms Wikipedia, it's that this practice harms pretty much every for profit business that Google does this to. Pretty much every company in an established space that Google has entered, is losing traffic and thus revenue due to this practice: Yelp, any flight/hotel/tourism based company, video hosting sites, weather data sites, the list goes on and on. Google is staking it's claim to content and data. It's legal, and provides short term benefits to users. But in the long term decreases competition and entrenches Google further, which is bad for users.

troughway 6y ago
>Yelp You had me feeling bad until I came across this.
- Kye 6y ago
  If they do it to Yelp, imagine how bad it is for Yelp's less awful competitors. You can't ignore the iceberg just because the tip is a jerk.
jgalt212 6y ago
> But in the long term In long term, there won't be free content for Google to scrape and display in search results knowledge graphs as ad supported / free content businesses shut down. Of course, google can create its own content and does so to feed the knowledge graphs, but it's way more expensive to do so. And the math might not be worth it for google manufacture from scratch all this content. So then folks won't use google, but will they go direct to Yelp 2030? Will there be Yelp 2030?
- thoraway1010 6y ago
  Google's ad network provides a lot of support to these "free" content options. Google is not bad at creating own content, the amount of data for example they can slurp up from phones running google maps is pretty darn high. Our local govt has traffic sensors for the highways - huge bucks to install / maintain etc. I can get more granular traffic that is more current from google for free. If you are going to compete with google in a data management / collection business, you are going to be playing with firm with pretty deep ability to ingest and process data.
geeostation 6y ago
well, it shouldn't be "legal" for one or cartel corporation to mediate between content/data and its users. its downright dystopian.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  The "one" part is out fault for not using Bing, but isn't "mediating content" between users and websites essentially the premise of a search engine?
  - KineticLensman 6y ago
    The complaint is not that content is being mediated, but that it is one company or cartel that is doing the mediating.
  - parkovski 6y ago
    Is it really though? Bing has been consistently worse than Google over the years. Maybe our definition of vendor lock-in needs to change. Honestly at this point it doesn't even matter how good Bing is - we've been unconsciously trained to work with Google's algorithm in particular and they just have a de facto monopoly on the mental process a person goes through to formulate a search. Everyone's workflow everywhere will be worse and take more time if they voluntarily stop using Google, that's not what I consider a fair competitive landscape.
    - lucasverra 6y ago
      I agree. Google perf is indeed better ...and still use Bing (via Ecosia) for 90% of request https://www.ecosia.org/ https://www.ecosia.org/
    - mod 6y ago
      So we think Google is doing a good job, but we also want to dictate to them how they do it? Seems like a recipe to have a worse product. The argument that they're so good at what they do, they've created a monopoly, I think is very fragile.
  - 6y ago
ForHackernews 6y ago
Those businesses should license their content differently, then. Wikipedia is CC BY-SA licensed.
- cma 6y ago
  Does google "share alike" the rest of the results page? Or is embedding considered enough separation to not need to share alike?
  - adrianN 6y ago
    I don't think Google claims any copyright on the Wikipedia snippets. You can share them just like you can share the original. They also give a link back to the source and clearly mark them as Wikipedia content. What more do you think that they should do to satisfy the license terms?
    - dllthomas 6y ago
      Arguably the entire generated page is a derived work, in which case the whole page should be CC-BY-SA not merely the snippet. On the other hand, arguably incorporation of the snippet (as the incorporation of context for other pages) is permitted in some way other than licensing (fair use?), in which case the terms of the license wouldn't apply. I would have to think harder to have a well-formed personal opinion.
    - cma 6y ago
      > What more do you think that they should do to satisfy the license terms? Just depends if the snippit is over the fair-use threshold I guess. If the share-alike license allows segregating content into frames within one page then it is ok too.
      - adrianN 6y ago
        Maybe you should familiarize yourself with the creative commons licenses. They allow all kinds of use, as long as (in the case of BY-SA) you mention the original author and share derivative works under the same license. Fair Use is not a concept in most jurisdictions btw.
xapata 6y ago
At the moment, it's good for users, as with most increases in competition. Google's hotel search and flight search user interfaces are superior to those provided by many of the task-specific businesses. Stratechery had a good analysis of the situation not long ago. https://stratechery.com/2019/the-google-squeeze/ https://stratechery.com/2019/the-google-squeeze/
alex_young 6y ago
Any site can control indexing through robots.txt. You either want this information in the search engine or you don't. Don't like one of the indexers? Tell it not to index you.
- Angostura 6y ago
  How about if you want the information in a search engine, but you would prefer that the "search engine" didn't just nick the contents and display it on their site, rather than sending searchers to yours?
  - alex_young 6y ago
    Isn't this what a search engine is? Google takes the excerpt which is relevant to your query, displays it to you, along with a link to the resource. Are we upset that the excerpt is too good? That the link isn't prominent enough? Something else?
    - jeromegv 6y ago
      I’m not sure if you’re being dense on purpose. They are not just excerpt. They are taking full on paragraph of content. We aren’t talking of the meta description here. It’s taking so much content that you don’t need to click anymore. Google is now the encyclopedia, with content they did not create.
    - httpsterio 6y ago
      Google should help the users choose whether to visit the site in question or not, but not flat-out remove the need as everything is directly presented in Google. Often the sentences Google shows in the card excerpts are lacking in context, but you wouldn't know without visiting the site. This would be comparable to write a scientific paper and only reading the headlines of each source you're using
    - tikititaki 6y ago
      In a sense, yes, the engine is too good. If you continue this trend, eventually nobody will have a reason to leave Google because anytime you search for anything Google will have the answer to everything. Sure, it's convenient but it's also a bit frightening for one company to have that much power and I think that's what people are a little hesitant about.
edw 6y ago
If the problem is not that Google is (not) stealing Wikipedia’s clicks but instead is stealing the clicks —- and, more accurately, content — of other, for profit, sites then why go with that headline? Because it’s good clickbait. I’m pretty sympathetic to the plights of Weather.com, Genius.com, Zagats (oops, Google bought them and then resold them), Yelp, and whomever else Google is appropriating non-public domain and non-Creative Commons content from. But that’s a story that’s already been told, so the site decided to find a heart-string tugging yet intellectually-dishonest angle.
puranjay 6y ago
Google has also been pushing sites that do on-page SEO right heavily in the SERPs. Which basically means that SERPs are now filled with copycat content that reads like crap but has all the right headings and keyword densities. The search experience is genuinely bad now. Nothing organic shows up anymore. It's either heavily optimized cookie cutter content, or some big brand name cutting through the clutter on the strength of its domain authority alone. I've taken to appending "reddit" to my queries just to know what actual people think about an issue
- wyre 6y ago
  I had an idea last night for a browser extension that hides SEO chaff from search engine results. I don't have much programming experience so who knows if I'll work on this or not though. I also append forum (or site:forumname.com) if I'm looking for more in-depth review than reddit gives.
- Implicated 6y ago
  > Google has also been pushing sites that do on-page SEO right heavily in the SERPs. I can't echo this loud enough - I made great profit by out-ranking heavily established retail outlets for years with super spammy and terrible sites purely with correct on-page SEO and garbage 'keyword optimized' content. I, as well, now have to append things to searches in order to get real answers. (Or start with a twitter search, depending on the topic)
- spideymans 6y ago
  >I've taken to appending "reddit" to my queries just to know what actual people think about an issue Woah, thought I might be one of the few that did this. You articulated my reasoning behind it perfectly.
- metrokoi 6y ago
  I often have to specifically search for a Wikipedia article in Google to get the result for it. For example, if I search for a pharmaceutical molecule, I will get pages of "health line" type pages listing side effects and uses. Five to ten years ago, the Wikipedia article for the molecule was always in the top three.
EGreg 6y ago
So once again, the ownerless open model beats the closed one. Boo hoo.
ChuckMcM 6y ago
Exactly, take "Fastsecret" for example, if you go to the web site and look up calories for something you often get the result in a one box from this site. However if you go to the site you see that they are really trying to get app conversions for their app. As conversions are typically a percentage of page visits, all of those page visits are now "toast" so to speak.
chris_f 6y ago
There is an alternative and IMO more sustainable model for a search engine, specifically for non-organic results (i.e. instant type answers). It is to create connections with each underlying data provider, and based on the search query provide results from their sites in accordance with their display/usage terms. It also provides the advantage of being able to curate the sources to provide higher quality for niche search topics. [0] I have been working on a search engine that works this exact way. The challenge is identifying and integrating the data sources for all the potential search intents. [0] https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=hiking+in+boston https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=hiking+in+boston
- freediver 6y ago
  This is a step in a good direction but is hard to scale. A better approach would be to still extract data from websites like Google does (this works), but automatically attribute share (50%?) of search engine's profits proportional to the website's share of appearances in these results. This money would await the webmaster when they eventually verify domain ownership. This is fair for everyone and creates positive feedback loops.
manigandham 6y ago
True but part of it is good competition. Google Flights is 100x better than any other flight search site.

by nend 6y ago

troughway 6y ago

>Yelp You had me feeling bad until I came across this.

Kye 6y ago
If they do it to Yelp, imagine how bad it is for Yelp's less awful competitors. You can't ignore the iceberg just because the tip is a jerk.

jgalt212 6y ago

> But in the long term In long term, there won't be free content for Google to scrape and display in search results knowledge graphs as ad supported / free content businesses shut down. Of course, google can create its own content and does so to feed the knowledge graphs, but it's way more expensive to do so. And the math might not be worth it for google manufacture from scratch all this content. So then folks won't use google, but will they go direct to Yelp 2030? Will there be Yelp 2030?

thoraway1010 6y ago
Google's ad network provides a lot of support to these "free" content options. Google is not bad at creating own content, the amount of data for example they can slurp up from phones running google maps is pretty darn high. Our local govt has traffic sensors for the highways - huge bucks to install / maintain etc. I can get more granular traffic that is more current from google for free. If you are going to compete with google in a data management / collection business, you are going to be playing with firm with pretty deep ability to ingest and process data.

geeostation 6y ago

well, it shouldn't be "legal" for one or cartel corporation to mediate between content/data and its users. its downright dystopian.

dehrmann 6y ago
The "one" part is out fault for not using Bing, but isn't "mediating content" between users and websites essentially the premise of a search engine?
- KineticLensman 6y ago
  The complaint is not that content is being mediated, but that it is one company or cartel that is doing the mediating.
- parkovski 6y ago
  Is it really though? Bing has been consistently worse than Google over the years. Maybe our definition of vendor lock-in needs to change. Honestly at this point it doesn't even matter how good Bing is - we've been unconsciously trained to work with Google's algorithm in particular and they just have a de facto monopoly on the mental process a person goes through to formulate a search. Everyone's workflow everywhere will be worse and take more time if they voluntarily stop using Google, that's not what I consider a fair competitive landscape.
  - lucasverra 6y ago
    I agree. Google perf is indeed better ...and still use Bing (via Ecosia) for 90% of request https://www.ecosia.org/ https://www.ecosia.org/
  - mod 6y ago
    So we think Google is doing a good job, but we also want to dictate to them how they do it? Seems like a recipe to have a worse product. The argument that they're so good at what they do, they've created a monopoly, I think is very fragile.
- 6y ago

ForHackernews 6y ago

Those businesses should license their content differently, then. Wikipedia is CC BY-SA licensed.

cma 6y ago
Does google "share alike" the rest of the results page? Or is embedding considered enough separation to not need to share alike?
- adrianN 6y ago
  I don't think Google claims any copyright on the Wikipedia snippets. You can share them just like you can share the original. They also give a link back to the source and clearly mark them as Wikipedia content. What more do you think that they should do to satisfy the license terms?
  - dllthomas 6y ago
    Arguably the entire generated page is a derived work, in which case the whole page should be CC-BY-SA not merely the snippet. On the other hand, arguably incorporation of the snippet (as the incorporation of context for other pages) is permitted in some way other than licensing (fair use?), in which case the terms of the license wouldn't apply. I would have to think harder to have a well-formed personal opinion.
  - cma 6y ago
    > What more do you think that they should do to satisfy the license terms? Just depends if the snippit is over the fair-use threshold I guess. If the share-alike license allows segregating content into frames within one page then it is ok too.
    - adrianN 6y ago
      Maybe you should familiarize yourself with the creative commons licenses. They allow all kinds of use, as long as (in the case of BY-SA) you mention the original author and share derivative works under the same license. Fair Use is not a concept in most jurisdictions btw.

xapata 6y ago

At the moment, it's good for users, as with most increases in competition. Google's hotel search and flight search user interfaces are superior to those provided by many of the task-specific businesses. Stratechery had a good analysis of the situation not long ago. https://stratechery.com/2019/the-google-squeeze/ https://stratechery.com/2019/the-google-squeeze/

alex_young 6y ago

Any site can control indexing through robots.txt. You either want this information in the search engine or you don't. Don't like one of the indexers? Tell it not to index you.

Angostura 6y ago
How about if you want the information in a search engine, but you would prefer that the "search engine" didn't just nick the contents and display it on their site, rather than sending searchers to yours?
- alex_young 6y ago
  Isn't this what a search engine is? Google takes the excerpt which is relevant to your query, displays it to you, along with a link to the resource. Are we upset that the excerpt is too good? That the link isn't prominent enough? Something else?
  - jeromegv 6y ago
    I’m not sure if you’re being dense on purpose. They are not just excerpt. They are taking full on paragraph of content. We aren’t talking of the meta description here. It’s taking so much content that you don’t need to click anymore. Google is now the encyclopedia, with content they did not create.
  - httpsterio 6y ago
    Google should help the users choose whether to visit the site in question or not, but not flat-out remove the need as everything is directly presented in Google. Often the sentences Google shows in the card excerpts are lacking in context, but you wouldn't know without visiting the site. This would be comparable to write a scientific paper and only reading the headlines of each source you're using
  - tikititaki 6y ago
    In a sense, yes, the engine is too good. If you continue this trend, eventually nobody will have a reason to leave Google because anytime you search for anything Google will have the answer to everything. Sure, it's convenient but it's also a bit frightening for one company to have that much power and I think that's what people are a little hesitant about.

edw 6y ago

If the problem is not that Google is (not) stealing Wikipedia’s clicks but instead is stealing the clicks —- and, more accurately, content — of other, for profit, sites then why go with that headline? Because it’s good clickbait. I’m pretty sympathetic to the plights of Weather.com, Genius.com, Zagats (oops, Google bought them and then resold them), Yelp, and whomever else Google is appropriating non-public domain and non-Creative Commons content from. But that’s a story that’s already been told, so the site decided to find a heart-string tugging yet intellectually-dishonest angle.

puranjay 6y ago

Google has also been pushing sites that do on-page SEO right heavily in the SERPs. Which basically means that SERPs are now filled with copycat content that reads like crap but has all the right headings and keyword densities. The search experience is genuinely bad now. Nothing organic shows up anymore. It's either heavily optimized cookie cutter content, or some big brand name cutting through the clutter on the strength of its domain authority alone. I've taken to appending "reddit" to my queries just to know what actual people think about an issue

wyre 6y ago
I had an idea last night for a browser extension that hides SEO chaff from search engine results. I don't have much programming experience so who knows if I'll work on this or not though. I also append forum (or site:forumname.com) if I'm looking for more in-depth review than reddit gives.
Implicated 6y ago
> Google has also been pushing sites that do on-page SEO right heavily in the SERPs. I can't echo this loud enough - I made great profit by out-ranking heavily established retail outlets for years with super spammy and terrible sites purely with correct on-page SEO and garbage 'keyword optimized' content. I, as well, now have to append things to searches in order to get real answers. (Or start with a twitter search, depending on the topic)
spideymans 6y ago
>I've taken to appending "reddit" to my queries just to know what actual people think about an issue Woah, thought I might be one of the few that did this. You articulated my reasoning behind it perfectly.
metrokoi 6y ago
I often have to specifically search for a Wikipedia article in Google to get the result for it. For example, if I search for a pharmaceutical molecule, I will get pages of "health line" type pages listing side effects and uses. Five to ten years ago, the Wikipedia article for the molecule was always in the top three.

EGreg 6y ago

So once again, the ownerless open model beats the closed one. Boo hoo.

ChuckMcM 6y ago

Exactly, take "Fastsecret" for example, if you go to the web site and look up calories for something you often get the result in a one box from this site. However if you go to the site you see that they are really trying to get app conversions for their app. As conversions are typically a percentage of page visits, all of those page visits are now "toast" so to speak.

chris_f 6y ago

There is an alternative and IMO more sustainable model for a search engine, specifically for non-organic results (i.e. instant type answers). It is to create connections with each underlying data provider, and based on the search query provide results from their sites in accordance with their display/usage terms. It also provides the advantage of being able to curate the sources to provide higher quality for niche search topics. [0] I have been working on a search engine that works this exact way. The challenge is identifying and integrating the data sources for all the potential search intents. [0] https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=hiking+in+boston https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=hiking+in+boston

freediver 6y ago
This is a step in a good direction but is hard to scale. A better approach would be to still extract data from websites like Google does (this works), but automatically attribute share (50%?) of search engine's profits proportional to the website's share of appearances in these results. This money would await the webmaster when they eventually verify domain ownership. This is fair for everyone and creates positive feedback loops.

manigandham 6y ago

True but part of it is good competition. Google Flights is 100x better than any other flight search site.