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I don't quite understand what you mean when you say "sending users to those websites is not profitable for google" - referring to Wikipedia, Stack, Reddit etc..

I don't quite understand what you mean when you say "sending users to those websites is not profitable for google" - referring to Wikipedia, Stack, Reddit etc... Organic search results only ever profit Google if they answer the user's question, because it makes that user more likely to use Google again and click an ad in the future. If a user searches something and the top result doesn't answer their question, then Google hasn't done it's job and the user is less likely to use Google again and therefore less likely to click an ad in the future. Surely the most profitable option for Google is to answer people's questions quickly and easily, whether you think these questions are answered by Wikipedia instead of a business site targeted to answering that question is a different story. I just don't understand how Google's goal of "answering people's questions" is somehow opposite to "providing quality" for users. I think for most of HN, they have a very narrow view that "quality" means antiquated wiki-type sites.

trashcan01 5y ago
> If a user searches something and the top result doesn't answer their question, then Google hasn't done it's job and the user is less likely to use Google again and therefore less likely to click an ad in the future. This is simply false. It would only be true if there was a better alternative to Google, which there isn’t.
satellite2 5y ago
Because those websites don't contain ads provided by the Google network, while Google can choose to send the user to websites that contain ads for which they are going to take a cut. Obviously the best for Google would be to send the user to a website with the best content and that contains Google ads but that's often not both the case. It's an optimization problem, and generally you cannot optimize for two variables, profits and user satisfaction. Maximizing only for profits would probably lead to completely garbage results so they probably have to compromise.

trashcan01 5y ago

> If a user searches something and the top result doesn't answer their question, then Google hasn't done it's job and the user is less likely to use Google again and therefore less likely to click an ad in the future. This is simply false. It would only be true if there was a better alternative to Google, which there isn’t.

satellite2 5y ago

Because those websites don't contain ads provided by the Google network, while Google can choose to send the user to websites that contain ads for which they are going to take a cut. Obviously the best for Google would be to send the user to a website with the best content and that contains Google ads but that's often not both the case. It's an optimization problem, and generally you cannot optimize for two variables, profits and user satisfaction. Maximizing only for profits would probably lead to completely garbage results so they probably have to compromise.