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No, I wouldn't do the same. Maximize profits? Yes, sacrifice core values and even social stability to acheive the goal? Nope. Be deceptive, do things against pe

No, I wouldn't do the same. Maximize profits? Yes, sacrifice core values and even social stability to acheive the goal? Nope. Be deceptive, do things against people's will? Nope.

jfoster 6y ago
Can you mention the worst or most deceptive thing they've done?
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Larry and Sergey said from the very beginning we needed a search engine in the academic realm because ads present an inherent conflict of interest. It's right here! http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html This was who they were and what they believed! Check out Appendix A, it's entirely about the mixed motivation of funding a search engine with ads. Yet not only did they make an ad company that has a search engine, they increasingly made their ads less distinguishable from organic results over time. Big highlighted yellow boxes have become search results with a tiny Ad marker hidden in the paragraph. Because deceiving people into clicking on ads is more profitable than getting them to the best organic result. When DoubleClick was bought they promised they'd keep the data separate to get the acquisition approved. Once it happened, they merged the data. Now they're saying the same about your Fitbit data... Yes, the entire concept of Google is against Larry and Sergey's original paper on the matter. They sold out, and college Larry and Sergey would be ashamed of their present day counterparts.
  - harshitaneja 6y ago
    I read Appendix A and it doesn't seem to be against what they are doing currently. Unless you assume their search engine has exceptions or intentional bias. We have no conclusive evidence to believe the same(including the currently discussed article). I am conflicted by their shopping app integration. But I wonder why I am having trouble accepting shopping integration vs maps integration. Having google maps part of the result makes for a better and quicker experience to information. But if shopping were a more successful product the reasons would hold their as well. I understand the intention behind anti-trust regulations in such cases but have trouble accepting them in data driven products like google which have huge user experience benefits from tighter integration of their own products. I would love if anyone could help me with my conflicting thoughts on this.
    - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
      So, the first thing you need to understand is that over half of users can't distinguish the ads from the organic results: https://www.stateofdigital.com/adwords-vs-organic-difference/ https://www.stateofdigital.com/adwords-vs-organic-difference... So if you look at the Appendix example below, > A good example was OpenText, which was reported to be selling companies the right to be listed at the top of the search results for particular queries ...That is actually what Google itself is doing today, in a very real and practical sense. They claim it's different because ads aren't search results, but since users can't tell the difference anymore, the result is the same. Another example in the Appendix is about trademark squatting: > For example, we noticed a major search engine would not return a large airline's homepage when the airline's name was given as a query. It so happened that the airline had placed an expensive ad, linked to the query that was its name. A better search engine would not have required this ad, and possibly resulted in the loss of the revenue from the airline to the search engine. Google does a slightly modified version of this too: It places competitors' ads above the real result for the airline's brand. This means that, in order for the airline to be the "top result" for it's own brand name, it has to pay Google for an ad that Larry and Sergey conclude "shouldn't be required". If you search for "best buy" on Google and aren't blocking ads, you'll notice the ad at the top is a Best Buy ad. There's no good reason they should have to buy that ad, because they're obviously the best result, the user already knew what they were looking for. But if you want to be the "top result" on Google search, you have to pay for it now. And we've hit that mixed motivation issue with an ad-based search engine: Google makes a lot of money when you click an ad. It doesn't make a lot of money when you click the organic search results. So Google has a huge incentive to make the ads look like search results, which is why Google search ads now look nearly identical to search results.
- badrabbit 6y ago
  It's a long list, hard to pick the worst. A few things come to mind like how they read your email and used it for ads (but then said sorry and stopped), log you into google on chrome if you login to any google service, shadow tracking, recording conversations and keeping it long term, location history tracking without user consent, secretly turning on wifi to track users, collecting payment and form history and exposing it acrosss devices, so much more. Those are just crimes against individuals, the things they do with theit work with governments! Be warned, you didn't care now when they abuse their power against others ,don't expect anyone left to carr when they use it against you.

No, I wouldn't do the same. Maximize profits? Yes, sacrifice core values and even social stability to acheive the goal? Nope. Be deceptive, do things against people's will? Nope.

jfoster 6y ago

Can you mention the worst or most deceptive thing they've done?

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Larry and Sergey said from the very beginning we needed a search engine in the academic realm because ads present an inherent conflict of interest. It's right here! http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html This was who they were and what they believed! Check out Appendix A, it's entirely about the mixed motivation of funding a search engine with ads. Yet not only did they make an ad company that has a search engine, they increasingly made their ads less distinguishable from organic results over time. Big highlighted yellow boxes have become search results with a tiny Ad marker hidden in the paragraph. Because deceiving people into clicking on ads is more profitable than getting them to the best organic result. When DoubleClick was bought they promised they'd keep the data separate to get the acquisition approved. Once it happened, they merged the data. Now they're saying the same about your Fitbit data... Yes, the entire concept of Google is against Larry and Sergey's original paper on the matter. They sold out, and college Larry and Sergey would be ashamed of their present day counterparts.
- harshitaneja 6y ago
  I read Appendix A and it doesn't seem to be against what they are doing currently. Unless you assume their search engine has exceptions or intentional bias. We have no conclusive evidence to believe the same(including the currently discussed article). I am conflicted by their shopping app integration. But I wonder why I am having trouble accepting shopping integration vs maps integration. Having google maps part of the result makes for a better and quicker experience to information. But if shopping were a more successful product the reasons would hold their as well. I understand the intention behind anti-trust regulations in such cases but have trouble accepting them in data driven products like google which have huge user experience benefits from tighter integration of their own products. I would love if anyone could help me with my conflicting thoughts on this.
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    So, the first thing you need to understand is that over half of users can't distinguish the ads from the organic results: https://www.stateofdigital.com/adwords-vs-organic-difference/ https://www.stateofdigital.com/adwords-vs-organic-difference... So if you look at the Appendix example below, > A good example was OpenText, which was reported to be selling companies the right to be listed at the top of the search results for particular queries ...That is actually what Google itself is doing today, in a very real and practical sense. They claim it's different because ads aren't search results, but since users can't tell the difference anymore, the result is the same. Another example in the Appendix is about trademark squatting: > For example, we noticed a major search engine would not return a large airline's homepage when the airline's name was given as a query. It so happened that the airline had placed an expensive ad, linked to the query that was its name. A better search engine would not have required this ad, and possibly resulted in the loss of the revenue from the airline to the search engine. Google does a slightly modified version of this too: It places competitors' ads above the real result for the airline's brand. This means that, in order for the airline to be the "top result" for it's own brand name, it has to pay Google for an ad that Larry and Sergey conclude "shouldn't be required". If you search for "best buy" on Google and aren't blocking ads, you'll notice the ad at the top is a Best Buy ad. There's no good reason they should have to buy that ad, because they're obviously the best result, the user already knew what they were looking for. But if you want to be the "top result" on Google search, you have to pay for it now. And we've hit that mixed motivation issue with an ad-based search engine: Google makes a lot of money when you click an ad. It doesn't make a lot of money when you click the organic search results. So Google has a huge incentive to make the ads look like search results, which is why Google search ads now look nearly identical to search results.
badrabbit 6y ago
It's a long list, hard to pick the worst. A few things come to mind like how they read your email and used it for ads (but then said sorry and stopped), log you into google on chrome if you login to any google service, shadow tracking, recording conversations and keeping it long term, location history tracking without user consent, secretly turning on wifi to track users, collecting payment and form history and exposing it acrosss devices, so much more. Those are just crimes against individuals, the things they do with theit work with governments! Be warned, you didn't care now when they abuse their power against others ,don't expect anyone left to carr when they use it against you.