4 ms·

> Google has historically been protective of their front page, why now? Probably for the same reason that Google is shutting down Stadia [1] and cutting staff

> Google has historically been protective of their front page, why now? Probably for the same reason that Google is shutting down Stadia [1] and cutting staff [2], and the same reason that we see roughly one announcement of layoffs here on Hacker News every week: most people expect that we are going into a recession. For example, see the price of major indexes like the S&P 500 or the NASDAQ and plot it on a 10+ year timescale. What surprises me the most actually is how quickly Google can adapt to the situation. Basically, they have been giving out candy for free when there was lots of money coming and now that they expect less, they quickly put on extra income streams and cut out money losers. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33022768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33022768 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32927848 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32927848

bushbaba 4y ago
I’m not sure I’d call that quick. Quick would be a single deep cut and return to normal operations.
arnaudsm 4y ago
I don't buy the SP500 graph argument, economies tend to behave on a log scale.
skrowl 4y ago
It's not really a matter of opinion or what people think. We're already in a recession here in the United States, as we've had two negative GDP growth quarters in a row. Anyone who says otherwise is likely just doing so for political reasons, as it's also an election year here in the United States, but to do so they'd have to literally change the definition of recession (they're trying but it's not working).
- v0idzer0 4y ago
  I’d argue that anyone using such confident language to declare a clear definition of one of the most subjective and abstract concepts known to man clearly has some ulterior motive. Political or otherwise.
  - moistofreason 4y ago
    The definition of recession has always been two quarters of negative gdp growth… very recently the current administration in the US changed the definition so as to not look bad.
    - kurikuri 4y ago
      NBER is the entity which demarcates the start and end dates of recessions in the US, not the White House.
      - kbelder 4y ago
        Who gave them that power? Seems more reasonable to let an economic term be governed by the consensus of economists over time.
- criley2 4y ago
  This is a classic example of how propaganda works. The layman's definition of recession, which has never been used officially or by policy-makers in America, is this bit about "negative GDP growth for two quarters". But despite that not being how we've always determined recessions here, if you read the reply above, the user has literally invented a political conspiracy about their ignorance about economics. The layman's definition isn't right? It's more complicated than a one-liner on the news? No! It's a conspiracy! This is EXACTLY how the propaganda is designed to affect them. Empower the ignorance such that layman's understanding is the only valid understanding, impugn the experts until economics is nothing more than an election year conspiracy. For anyone interested in the truth of how recessions have been determined in the United States for the past sixty years, it's only about three paragraphs of information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bureau_of_Economic_Research#Recession_markers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bureau_of_Economic_Re...
  - braingenious 4y ago
    That’s a lot of uses of “conspiracy theory”, “ignorance” and “propaganda” for the proof of your superior intellect and immunity to propaganda to be… a link to wikipedia. Going off how much you have positioned yourself as an expert on economics and human psychology, I was expecting this to end with “Here is a link to my dissertation on this very issue!”
    - djmips 4y ago
      This isn't a PhD level argument here.
      - braingenious 4y ago
        I agree! I suppose more informed people would probably have spent more of the post talking about the topic at hand rather than throwing around insults and accusing people of spreading conspiracy theories. It is still pretty funny to see someone spend 80% of a post describing their acumen at spotting a social phenomenon (conspiracy theories and ignorance) only to follow it up with a wiki link about something wholly unrelated to ignorance or conspiracy theories. For example, here’s a link to how to gather information: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
- thrown_22 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - genshii 4y ago
    Care to elaborate?
    - freediver 4y ago
      There are now two flagged and dead comments replying to this. I wonder what mechanisms do HN users have to interact with those replies?
    - thrown_22 4y ago
      [flagged]
    - systemvoltage 4y ago
      I don't think the response should have been flagged. Sources are directly from CDC. They've changed the definition of what a vaccine is regardless of your position on vaccination.
ren_engineer 4y ago
>most people expect that we are going into a recession by the standard definition we are already in one, odds are we are actually going to enter a global depression and probably one worse than 2008
- somenameforme 4y ago
  If even a fraction of what many are predicting comes to transpire over the next few months, then you can likely change 2008 to 1929.
tyingq 4y ago
> Google has historically been protective of their front page, why now? Unreasonable shareholder expectations of continued double-digit percentage YoY growth. Growth that exceeds internet usage growth in general. The only way that happens is more ads displacing content, or appearing in formerly empty spots. I would guess at this point, they've hit the wall on alternatives like better targeting, placement, etc.
- _hl_ 4y ago
  > The only way that happens is more ads displacing content, or appearing in formerly empty spots. Or eeking out more dollars per ad through better targetting, or through diversifying the business and scaling new revenue streams, or ... I think it's reasonable to expect Google to grow faster than general internet usage. Believing otherwise means you believe Google is in maintenance mode, incapable of improving their existing product or unlocking new revenue streams through innovation. Given the sheer size of Google, that's quite a bold belief to hold.
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    The sheer size of google is the best reason to believe they can't innovate any more.
  - tyingq 4y ago
    You can look at the historical track for both - unlocking new revenue streams. Some success here, but modest, going from ~90% of revenue from ads to ~80%. But it all moved to GCP, which still operates at a loss. That doesn't take any pressure off the ads. - revenue gains with targeting or other things that don't push real content down. It's pretty easy to find historical screen shots of how much the organic content gets pushed down below the fold. Today, most of the lucrative queries have almost nothing but ads above the fold. ("iphone", "vegas hotels", "robot vacuum").
- xnx 4y ago
  or taking advertising dollars from orher channels like print, outdoor advertising, radio and TV.
jonas21 4y ago
Google has been promoting other Google products on the home page for over 20 years [1]. I think the only difference this time around is that people didn't realize Fitbit was acquired by Google. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt2iPpJmySU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt2iPpJmySU
tjpnz 4y ago
Perhaps all those people claiming to put in two or three hours each day there aren't as productive as they believed themselves to be. I wonder how much that particular brand of hubris will be tolerated now times are tough.

bushbaba 4y ago

I’m not sure I’d call that quick. Quick would be a single deep cut and return to normal operations.

arnaudsm 4y ago

I don't buy the SP500 graph argument, economies tend to behave on a log scale.

skrowl 4y ago

It's not really a matter of opinion or what people think. We're already in a recession here in the United States, as we've had two negative GDP growth quarters in a row. Anyone who says otherwise is likely just doing so for political reasons, as it's also an election year here in the United States, but to do so they'd have to literally change the definition of recession (they're trying but it's not working).

v0idzer0 4y ago
I’d argue that anyone using such confident language to declare a clear definition of one of the most subjective and abstract concepts known to man clearly has some ulterior motive. Political or otherwise.
- moistofreason 4y ago
  The definition of recession has always been two quarters of negative gdp growth… very recently the current administration in the US changed the definition so as to not look bad.
  - kurikuri 4y ago
    NBER is the entity which demarcates the start and end dates of recessions in the US, not the White House.
    - kbelder 4y ago
      Who gave them that power? Seems more reasonable to let an economic term be governed by the consensus of economists over time.
criley2 4y ago
This is a classic example of how propaganda works. The layman's definition of recession, which has never been used officially or by policy-makers in America, is this bit about "negative GDP growth for two quarters". But despite that not being how we've always determined recessions here, if you read the reply above, the user has literally invented a political conspiracy about their ignorance about economics. The layman's definition isn't right? It's more complicated than a one-liner on the news? No! It's a conspiracy! This is EXACTLY how the propaganda is designed to affect them. Empower the ignorance such that layman's understanding is the only valid understanding, impugn the experts until economics is nothing more than an election year conspiracy. For anyone interested in the truth of how recessions have been determined in the United States for the past sixty years, it's only about three paragraphs of information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bureau_of_Economic_Research#Recession_markers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bureau_of_Economic_Re...
- braingenious 4y ago
  That’s a lot of uses of “conspiracy theory”, “ignorance” and “propaganda” for the proof of your superior intellect and immunity to propaganda to be… a link to wikipedia. Going off how much you have positioned yourself as an expert on economics and human psychology, I was expecting this to end with “Here is a link to my dissertation on this very issue!”
  - djmips 4y ago
    This isn't a PhD level argument here.
    - braingenious 4y ago
      I agree! I suppose more informed people would probably have spent more of the post talking about the topic at hand rather than throwing around insults and accusing people of spreading conspiracy theories. It is still pretty funny to see someone spend 80% of a post describing their acumen at spotting a social phenomenon (conspiracy theories and ignorance) only to follow it up with a wiki link about something wholly unrelated to ignorance or conspiracy theories. For example, here’s a link to how to gather information: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
thrown_22 4y ago
[flagged]
- genshii 4y ago
  Care to elaborate?
  - freediver 4y ago
    There are now two flagged and dead comments replying to this. I wonder what mechanisms do HN users have to interact with those replies?
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - systemvoltage 4y ago
    I don't think the response should have been flagged. Sources are directly from CDC. They've changed the definition of what a vaccine is regardless of your position on vaccination.

ren_engineer 4y ago

>most people expect that we are going into a recession by the standard definition we are already in one, odds are we are actually going to enter a global depression and probably one worse than 2008

somenameforme 4y ago
If even a fraction of what many are predicting comes to transpire over the next few months, then you can likely change 2008 to 1929.

tyingq 4y ago

> Google has historically been protective of their front page, why now? Unreasonable shareholder expectations of continued double-digit percentage YoY growth. Growth that exceeds internet usage growth in general. The only way that happens is more ads displacing content, or appearing in formerly empty spots. I would guess at this point, they've hit the wall on alternatives like better targeting, placement, etc.

_hl_ 4y ago
> The only way that happens is more ads displacing content, or appearing in formerly empty spots. Or eeking out more dollars per ad through better targetting, or through diversifying the business and scaling new revenue streams, or ... I think it's reasonable to expect Google to grow faster than general internet usage. Believing otherwise means you believe Google is in maintenance mode, incapable of improving their existing product or unlocking new revenue streams through innovation. Given the sheer size of Google, that's quite a bold belief to hold.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  The sheer size of google is the best reason to believe they can't innovate any more.
- tyingq 4y ago
  You can look at the historical track for both - unlocking new revenue streams. Some success here, but modest, going from ~90% of revenue from ads to ~80%. But it all moved to GCP, which still operates at a loss. That doesn't take any pressure off the ads. - revenue gains with targeting or other things that don't push real content down. It's pretty easy to find historical screen shots of how much the organic content gets pushed down below the fold. Today, most of the lucrative queries have almost nothing but ads above the fold. ("iphone", "vegas hotels", "robot vacuum").
xnx 4y ago
or taking advertising dollars from orher channels like print, outdoor advertising, radio and TV.

jonas21 4y ago

Google has been promoting other Google products on the home page for over 20 years [1]. I think the only difference this time around is that people didn't realize Fitbit was acquired by Google. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt2iPpJmySU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt2iPpJmySU

tjpnz 4y ago

Perhaps all those people claiming to put in two or three hours each day there aren't as productive as they believed themselves to be. I wonder how much that particular brand of hubris will be tolerated now times are tough.