6 ms·

I thought it was a commonly held thought that Google didn't want Chrome users using bookmarks because it directly competed with their search (and advertising).

atoav 4y ago
Why click on a bookmark if you can make your users google it?
- cma 4y ago
  And if the user is wanting to visit something like Ford.com, Google can charge Ford millions over time to be the first result, pitting them in a bidding war against Chevy for the top result (with tiny ad disclaimer) for a search for "Ford".
  - hk__2 4y ago
    > And if the user is wanting to visit something like Ford.com, Google can charge Ford millions over time to be the first result, pitting them in a bidding war against Chevy for the top result (with tiny ad disclaimer) for a search for "Ford". That’s not how it works. If you own the website Ford.com, Google won’t charge you millions to bid on the keyword "Ford". They _will_ do it if you are Chevy and are bidding on Ford.
    - corobo 4y ago
      Apparently it is how it works if you go by Basecamp's words https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/1168986962704982016 https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/1168986962704982016 I'm making an assumption we're all talking about the ads above the results, as afaik you can't pay to shuffle the real results
      - redhedgehog12 4y ago
        You can't pay to shuffle the organic results. As for how much you pay for a click on any specific keyword, it isn't fixed and depends on two main things. I am simplifying here. 1. How related (google thinks) your page and ad copy is to the intent behind the keyword. More related = (generally) lower cpc 2. The reserve price that google sets for that keyword. It used to be a second price auction in that you'd only ever pay 1p above the second highest bidder. It has now changed in that there is a reserve price for each keyword based on your page, ad copy and google's valuation of that keyword. This reserve price can be lowered or raised depending on how good and related Google thinks your page and ads are. It can fluctuate lots depending on your input but if google's valuation is high you'll never get it to pennies per click. Insurance for injury claims for example will always be more than £10 per click no matter how good your page or ad copy is. Google just knows that those conversions are worth tons so people WILL pay high cpcs for them. So in the Ford Chevy example, Ford's page is much more related to someone searching for Ford, Google knows the intent is likely to find a ford page so ford would pay FAR less than Chevy. Chevy's page likely isn't matching the intent that google assumes the user has so their reserve price and hence final cost per click would be much higher. Competitor bidding on google search is expensive. Brand protection - bidding on your own brand terms - is (in my 7 years experience doing this) always incredibly cheap, 1 or 2 pence per click.
        corobo 4y ago
        Where did you get this information? I can't find anything about ads on the internet without 300 copy paste articles popping up about 10 great ways to write ad copy so couldn't just google it. Temporarily intrigued, don't go too far out of your way for my curiosity.
        redhedgehog12 4y ago
        I've put some links below that might explain it a bit better than I did. My info above is a mix of from google's docs as well as experience, talking to others in the industry etc. Ad Rank[0] - this is the algorithm that determines essentially how much you pay like I mentioned. It's far more complex than my simplified explanation as it also takes into account context around the user. The device they're on, their previous searches etc. So a user who is on their 5th search for shoes and is now searching from their desktop may be more interested in a product page than an article since google may assume they're ready to buy now and they always buy from their desktop etc. Ad Rank thresholds[1] - This is the friendly term for the reserve price I mentioned. It's the reserve price for a keyword based on all your inputs. Can go up and down depending on how relevant google thinks your stuff is at that moment for the user but generally google will set a floor for it. Just more info[2] - more info from Google about how this stuff is worked out and what it means in practice. If you google around "ad rank effect on cpc" you'll get more relevant stuff if you're interested. [0] https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1752122?hl=en-GB https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1752122?hl=en-G... [1] https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7634668 https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7634668 [2] https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1722122 https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1722122 When you think about what google is trying to do with ads it does make sense. If they let anyone serve rubbish for any search, people will stop clicking ads and advertisers will stop using it. Google loses out. It's in the users (arguably, depending on how you view ads), the advertisers and Google's best interest to incentivise advertisers to make their stuff relevant and good.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
Barrin92 4y ago
I think that's venturing into tinfoil hat territory. More likely telemetry told them that some percentage > 50 always toggle the bookmark bar off and they decided to make it the default. It's still there on new tabs after all. Companies like Google are long term greedy, they don't make unpopular UX decisions for scraps.
- mattlondon 4y ago
  More likely there was a large amount of telemetry saying that the bookmark bar was visible but never used by a large group of users. I can never imagine e.g. my mum turning the bookmark bar off, but I can certainly imagine her just totally ignoring it/not knowing what it is.
- malepoon 4y ago
  It's true though. You see something similar with the address bar: Chrome's is pretty horrible for accessing history or bookmarks, it instead tries to push you to do a search. Firefox has much richer information here.
- ithrow 4y ago
  Companies like Google are long term greedy, they don't make unpopular UX decisions for scraps. Like not letting you add tags? not tagging definitely makes you use google search more.
  - amadeuspagel 4y ago
    I think both tags and folders would confuse people. I'd personally like them to remove folders and have only tags, but you can already imagine the HN comments ... google screwing with bookmarks to make you use search more ... not compatible with other browsers (import/export) ... monopolistic ... lock-in.
  - westurner 4y ago
    "Do you like the browser bookmark manager?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24511454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24511454 : > Things I'd add to browser bookmark managers someday: > - Support for (persisting) bookmarks tags. From the post re: the re-launch of del.icio.us: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23985623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23985623 >> "Allow reading and writing bookmark tags" https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1225916 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1225916 >> Notes re: how [browser bookmarks with URI|str* tags] could be standardized with JSON-LD: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1225916#c116 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1225916#c116 * *** WICG/scroll-to-text-fragment "Integration with W3C Web Annotations" https://github.com/WICG/scroll-to-text-fragment/issues/4 https://github.com/WICG/scroll-to-text-fragment/issues/4 *** W3C Web Share API & W3C Web Target API https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30449716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30449716
lozenge 4y ago
Vertical screen space was very precious when Chrome came out. I remember their first feature over Firefox was moving tabs into the title bar and removing the menu bar, bookmark bar and bottom status bar, so saving about four bars of space for page contents. Since launch, they've reduced the vertical space of the tab bar/title bar, even as screens gained more pixels. Original design- https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/small_12.html https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/small_12.html The competition- https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Screenshot-of-Mozilla-Firefox-3.png https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Screenshot-of-Mozi...
- kkfx 4y ago
  And that's why Tab Center Reborn (formerly Tab Center Redux) FF extension came to live, while vertical space is scarce on modern monitors horizontal is ample normally.
- fmajid 4y ago
  Vertical space is still at a premium because most laptops use the obnoxious 16:9 aspect ratio. That’s why I keep my tabs on the right in Vivaldi.
  - dotancohen 4y ago
    I've tried that, but you haven't lived until you've tried Tree Style Tabs in Firefox.
    - permo-w 4y ago
      I like tree-style tabs, and I use it when working on projects, but I find that it is a long, long way from what it could be, which is probably a direct result of the lack of competition the settings UI is absolutely awful; depending on which appearance you choose, it either looks ugly or blurs together; it frequently has visual glitches; could certainly be more customisable appearance and shortcut-wise; doesn’t allow you to have a title or marker as the top level tab; as far as I can tell doesn’t let you save a session of tabs; has an unpleasant glitch where if you drop a tab in the wrong place it’ll disappear behind the current window and never be reachable; the new tab behaviour irritates me; and probably a few more complaints that I’d have to actually open it up to remember
MasterScrat 4y ago
I definitely feel like autocompletion in the omnibar is getting worse and worse, especially when the URL i'm looking for is bookmarked. The "this is just to make me google it again" thought does regularly crosses my mind.
- permo-w 4y ago
  google makes a point of deleting your history after a certain amount of time and does not give any option to change it. I find this extremely irritating

atoav 4y ago

Why click on a bookmark if you can make your users google it?

cma 4y ago
And if the user is wanting to visit something like Ford.com, Google can charge Ford millions over time to be the first result, pitting them in a bidding war against Chevy for the top result (with tiny ad disclaimer) for a search for "Ford".
- hk__2 4y ago
  > And if the user is wanting to visit something like Ford.com, Google can charge Ford millions over time to be the first result, pitting them in a bidding war against Chevy for the top result (with tiny ad disclaimer) for a search for "Ford". That’s not how it works. If you own the website Ford.com, Google won’t charge you millions to bid on the keyword "Ford". They _will_ do it if you are Chevy and are bidding on Ford.
  - corobo 4y ago
    Apparently it is how it works if you go by Basecamp's words https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/1168986962704982016 https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/1168986962704982016 I'm making an assumption we're all talking about the ads above the results, as afaik you can't pay to shuffle the real results
    - redhedgehog12 4y ago
      You can't pay to shuffle the organic results. As for how much you pay for a click on any specific keyword, it isn't fixed and depends on two main things. I am simplifying here. 1. How related (google thinks) your page and ad copy is to the intent behind the keyword. More related = (generally) lower cpc 2. The reserve price that google sets for that keyword. It used to be a second price auction in that you'd only ever pay 1p above the second highest bidder. It has now changed in that there is a reserve price for each keyword based on your page, ad copy and google's valuation of that keyword. This reserve price can be lowered or raised depending on how good and related Google thinks your page and ads are. It can fluctuate lots depending on your input but if google's valuation is high you'll never get it to pennies per click. Insurance for injury claims for example will always be more than £10 per click no matter how good your page or ad copy is. Google just knows that those conversions are worth tons so people WILL pay high cpcs for them. So in the Ford Chevy example, Ford's page is much more related to someone searching for Ford, Google knows the intent is likely to find a ford page so ford would pay FAR less than Chevy. Chevy's page likely isn't matching the intent that google assumes the user has so their reserve price and hence final cost per click would be much higher. Competitor bidding on google search is expensive. Brand protection - bidding on your own brand terms - is (in my 7 years experience doing this) always incredibly cheap, 1 or 2 pence per click.
      - corobo 4y ago
        Where did you get this information? I can't find anything about ads on the internet without 300 copy paste articles popping up about 10 great ways to write ad copy so couldn't just google it. Temporarily intrigued, don't go too far out of your way for my curiosity.
        redhedgehog12 4y ago
        I've put some links below that might explain it a bit better than I did. My info above is a mix of from google's docs as well as experience, talking to others in the industry etc. Ad Rank[0] - this is the algorithm that determines essentially how much you pay like I mentioned. It's far more complex than my simplified explanation as it also takes into account context around the user. The device they're on, their previous searches etc. So a user who is on their 5th search for shoes and is now searching from their desktop may be more interested in a product page than an article since google may assume they're ready to buy now and they always buy from their desktop etc. Ad Rank thresholds[1] - This is the friendly term for the reserve price I mentioned. It's the reserve price for a keyword based on all your inputs. Can go up and down depending on how relevant google thinks your stuff is at that moment for the user but generally google will set a floor for it. Just more info[2] - more info from Google about how this stuff is worked out and what it means in practice. If you google around "ad rank effect on cpc" you'll get more relevant stuff if you're interested. [0] https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1752122?hl=en-GB https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1752122?hl=en-G... [1] https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7634668 https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7634668 [2] https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1722122 https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1722122 When you think about what google is trying to do with ads it does make sense. If they let anyone serve rubbish for any search, people will stop clicking ads and advertisers will stop using it. Google loses out. It's in the users (arguably, depending on how you view ads), the advertisers and Google's best interest to incentivise advertisers to make their stuff relevant and good.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]

Barrin92 4y ago

I think that's venturing into tinfoil hat territory. More likely telemetry told them that some percentage > 50 always toggle the bookmark bar off and they decided to make it the default. It's still there on new tabs after all. Companies like Google are long term greedy, they don't make unpopular UX decisions for scraps.

mattlondon 4y ago
More likely there was a large amount of telemetry saying that the bookmark bar was visible but never used by a large group of users. I can never imagine e.g. my mum turning the bookmark bar off, but I can certainly imagine her just totally ignoring it/not knowing what it is.
malepoon 4y ago
It's true though. You see something similar with the address bar: Chrome's is pretty horrible for accessing history or bookmarks, it instead tries to push you to do a search. Firefox has much richer information here.
ithrow 4y ago
Companies like Google are long term greedy, they don't make unpopular UX decisions for scraps. Like not letting you add tags? not tagging definitely makes you use google search more.
- amadeuspagel 4y ago
  I think both tags and folders would confuse people. I'd personally like them to remove folders and have only tags, but you can already imagine the HN comments ... google screwing with bookmarks to make you use search more ... not compatible with other browsers (import/export) ... monopolistic ... lock-in.
- westurner 4y ago
  "Do you like the browser bookmark manager?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24511454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24511454 : > Things I'd add to browser bookmark managers someday: > - Support for (persisting) bookmarks tags. From the post re: the re-launch of del.icio.us: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23985623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23985623 >> "Allow reading and writing bookmark tags" https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1225916 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1225916 >> Notes re: how [browser bookmarks with URI|str* tags] could be standardized with JSON-LD: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1225916#c116 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1225916#c116 * *** WICG/scroll-to-text-fragment "Integration with W3C Web Annotations" https://github.com/WICG/scroll-to-text-fragment/issues/4 https://github.com/WICG/scroll-to-text-fragment/issues/4 *** W3C Web Share API & W3C Web Target API https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30449716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30449716

lozenge 4y ago

Vertical screen space was very precious when Chrome came out. I remember their first feature over Firefox was moving tabs into the title bar and removing the menu bar, bookmark bar and bottom status bar, so saving about four bars of space for page contents. Since launch, they've reduced the vertical space of the tab bar/title bar, even as screens gained more pixels. Original design- https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/small_12.html https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/small_12.html The competition- https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Screenshot-of-Mozilla-Firefox-3.png https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Screenshot-of-Mozi...

kkfx 4y ago
And that's why Tab Center Reborn (formerly Tab Center Redux) FF extension came to live, while vertical space is scarce on modern monitors horizontal is ample normally.
fmajid 4y ago
Vertical space is still at a premium because most laptops use the obnoxious 16:9 aspect ratio. That’s why I keep my tabs on the right in Vivaldi.
- dotancohen 4y ago
  I've tried that, but you haven't lived until you've tried Tree Style Tabs in Firefox.
  - permo-w 4y ago
    I like tree-style tabs, and I use it when working on projects, but I find that it is a long, long way from what it could be, which is probably a direct result of the lack of competition the settings UI is absolutely awful; depending on which appearance you choose, it either looks ugly or blurs together; it frequently has visual glitches; could certainly be more customisable appearance and shortcut-wise; doesn’t allow you to have a title or marker as the top level tab; as far as I can tell doesn’t let you save a session of tabs; has an unpleasant glitch where if you drop a tab in the wrong place it’ll disappear behind the current window and never be reachable; the new tab behaviour irritates me; and probably a few more complaints that I’d have to actually open it up to remember

MasterScrat 4y ago

I definitely feel like autocompletion in the omnibar is getting worse and worse, especially when the URL i'm looking for is bookmarked. The "this is just to make me google it again" thought does regularly crosses my mind.

permo-w 4y ago
google makes a point of deleting your history after a certain amount of time and does not give any option to change it. I find this extremely irritating