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Google Fires Back at Twitter: You Took Yourself Out of Search

143 points by rhufnagel 15y ago

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
dos1 15y ago
I can't help but be reminded of early 90's Microsoft when I read about what Google is doing lately. They're definitely on the "extend" phase of embrace, extend, extinguish. They're creating their own little insular community. Search results return Google+ results first and prominently at the top. Their browser has features that no other browser supports (native client, Dart etc). Their previously free APIs are now going to cost lots and lots of money (Maps). None of these things are bad in and of themselves, and all of it is certainly their choice. However, if this is the direction they're headed then I want no part of it. Edit: For those of you who find my comment off topic - did you even read the article or just the summary? Here are some relevant quotes: "Twitter had criticized Google’s new social search feature, which it calls Search plus Your World, on Tuesday. As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter, its statement said. We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone." "Sullivan told Schmidt he thought one feature of Search plus Your World, which recommends relevant people to follow on Google+ but not other networks, is the equivalent of saying ‘hey, you can only find information about finance on Google finance. You cannot find information about finance anywhere else." Clearly people are upset about Google trying to block out competitor's results. I believe my comment is completely ON topic. Edit 2: Wow, I had no idea how many Google apologists were out there. I had high hopes that the Hacker News community might actually be objective and not just fawn all over Google. Christ was I mistaken.
- latch 15y ago
  Your comment is unrelated to the article. Fine if you have a problem with stuff Google is doing, but on this topic they currently seem a lot more right than wrong.
  - dos1 15y ago
    Did you even read the article? There are a number of quotes from people in the article that say what Google is doing here is definitely wrong.
    - latch 15y ago
      Did you read the article? One of the quotes is from Twitter. The other is a question a reporter ask and the entire point of the article is to answer the question. This is the article which I read: Twitter: Google is blocking us Reporter: Blocking twitter is evil Google: WTF? Twitter told us (and they really did) to block its links!?!
      - dos1 15y ago
        So to summarize: You agree that my comment was on topic, since clearly there are some who believe Google is in the wrong. Just because YOU don't agree with them doesn't mean my comment was off topic.
        lonnyk 15y ago
        I think it is important to point out that Google seems to be saying they are willing to talk w/ the other networks about getting in the same position, but as of now those talks have not happened. Would Google have G+ suggestions AND Twitter suggestions presented in the same way if they still had an agreement w/ Twitter? Would the G+ suggestions be wrong if they still had the Twitter suggestions?
- mchanson 15y ago
  So hard to give up gmail habit though...
- jamesgeck0 15y ago
  When Twitter pulled out, Google didn't have a way to do social networking results. Facebook presumably turned down their offers. This is one of the big reasons why Google+ was built to begin with.
- Karunamon 15y ago
  >They're definitely on the "extend" phase of embrace, extend, extinguish. When you provide even a little evidence that this is their plan, this may be taken seriously. As it stands, they are still a huge champion of open standards (hardly a "phase"), and have raised the price on two of their more expensive services (app engine and maps) - both of which only affect developers, not end users. As it stands, your fears are FUD and nothing more.
  - dos1 15y ago
    Just look at Chrome. On one hand, Google claims undying support for web standards, and on the other they're adding a bunch of non-standard features to their browser trying to get people tied in. This is very similar to MS and IE6 + ActiveX
    - dpritchett 15y ago
      What are these non-standard features? Are they open sourced? How hard would it be to fold them into another browser, especially one built on Webkit?
      - dos1 15y ago
        Dart, native client, Gears was in there for awhile.
        dpritchett 15y ago
        Gears seems like a perfect example. It predated the HTML5 local storage when Google found such a tool useful. Now the standard's caught up and Gears has been yanked in favor of the standard. Dart and NaCl could conceivably lead to evil, but I like the history shown with Gears/HTML5.
        abraham 15y ago
        Dart is not in any release of Chrome. You can download a special experimental Chromium release with Dart support but it is not in the nightly.
- rryan 15y ago
  > native client, Dart, etc. You forgot SPDY, WebRTC, etc. This is nothing like ActiveX. These are open-source technologies and other browsers are free and invited to implement them. They're trying to push the web forward.
  - dos1 15y ago
    Sure they're free and open source. But they aren't STANDARDS. You seem to be unable to look objectively at the situation. While ActiveX was closed source, by extending the web with non standard technology the end result will be the same, open source or not.
    - yanw 15y ago
      But they are adhering to standards as well, more so than anyone else for that matter, point to an instance where they're not. Also it takes ages for stuff to get standardized, are you suggesting that no technology should be applicable until it's the standard? I see no issue in introducing new cool tech specially if it's opensource.
      - dos1 15y ago
        I agree, they do a great job following the standards. I love that. What I don't love is when they break away. That's my whole point - work with the standards body to get your new cool tech introduced. Don't just go rogue and do whatever you want, that's when problems arise.
        yanw 15y ago
        "Breaking away" as you describe it sounds like innovation to me, and pacing innovation to standard bodies would kill it. I can't think of specifics but surly most of what is considered the standard today was once the experimentation of one company or one lab.
        dos1 15y ago
- yanw 15y ago
  This meme about Google turning into "old bad Microsoft" is a result of false dichotomy. Search+'s effect on the results page is peripheral, manifesting on the right pane and search suggestions, the main results are largely the same and there is a handy toggle to switch modes. Their browser is opensource, NaCl is opensource, Dart is opensource, the Microsoft stuff never was opensource. They started charging for the Maps API because some German mapping company complained to the EU that they can't compete with free.
  - dos1 15y ago
    Oooh, false dichotomy. Because you used big words you must be right. See my below comment: Open source does NOT equal standards. They are different. Further, the picture in this article: http://mashable.com/2012/01/10/google-launches-social-search/ http://mashable.com/2012/01/10/google-launches-social-search... clearly shows your Google+ results directly on top of your normal results.
    - yanw 15y ago
      See my comment regarding standards: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3456594 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3456594 At the top it shows the number of public and private results, and the picture cluster always was there, they just added social relevancy to it.
  - nudded 15y ago
    The fact that they are opensource has very little to do with it. They are trying to push certain technologies into certain directions under the cover of opensource. They are still in single control of the spec. This is not true with standard bodies where several companies can agree on it.
    - yanw 15y ago
      http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3456594 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3456594
    - jrockway 15y ago
- mda 15y ago
  Most of the comments simply points to flaws in your arguments. I advise you to think carefully about the issues raised before calling them "apologists" and "not objective".
  - dos1 15y ago
    And I've tried to honestly reply to every comment that points out a flaw in my argument. I did think carefully before using the word apologist, but I've had too many downvotes to really believe that people are thinking critically. What I'm saying is NOT that Google is evil, but rather they're increasingly heading in a direction I don't like, for the reasons I've outlined.
    - Gigablah 15y ago
      "Oooh, false dichotomy. Because you used big words you must be right." "You seem to be unable to look objectively at the situation." "Wow, you're just being contrary to be contrary aren't you?" Seems like it has more to do with your attitude, don't you think?
    - Karunamon 15y ago
      >..but I've had too many downvotes to really believe that people are thinking critically Did you stop to think that maybe you're getting downvoted for nonsensical and wrongheaded arguments? We get it - you don't like Google. You just don't have a valid reason for doing so. You're entitled to your opinion, but not your facts.
  - rwolf 15y ago
    "I'm being downvoted so people must not be thinking critically."
- statictype 15y ago
  Their browser has features that no other browser supports (native client, Dart etc). It's funny that you think these are bad things. Innovation happens by trying new things and pushing them out. If it sticks, great, if not, then it will die out. A ton of the technology today that we consider as 'standards' didn't start out that way. When Microsoft created XmlHttpRequest, were you complaining then that they were pushing out non-standard features that other browsers didn't have? Give credit to Google for trying to push the state-of-the-art in web technology forward.
  - kenjackson 15y ago
    When Microsoft created XmlHttpRequest, were you complaining then that they were pushing out non-standard features that other browsers didn't have? In fact a lot of people did complain. This was the embrace, extend, extinguish attack that people had. Honestly, an absurd claim back then as well. I would think that you would try to make existing products so much better that you run your competitors out of business (or they improve so much that they stay competitive). But we have a culture where certain companies can do no wrong, while other companies can do no right. It's almost like asking a Republican in South Carolina about accomplishments by Obama -- doesn't really matter what he does, he'll be attacked. The dev space isn't so different.
- drivebyacct2 15y ago
  You have 200 karma and are complaining about "Google apologists" when your allegations of "extending" of "embrace, extend, extinguish" are new features in Chrome and charging for APIs like Maps (saw yesterday's article, I see). Come on.
  - tdoggette 15y ago
    What on earth does his karma have to do with anything?
    - drivebyacct2 15y ago
      He has a relatively new account, he makes unfounded accusations and terribly stereotypical FUD about Google, is rude to people who write him replies in comments and then edits his comments mocking the "Hacker News community" because they disagreed and he wasn't able to explain his stance. The karma was a shot across the bow.
- amatheus 15y ago
  Apologists? I thought the term was fanboy - at least that's how an Apple "apologist" would be labeled here. The level of trust on Google that some people have is really astonishing. I think the problem is, for all their "do no evil" mantra, as they need the feel to keep growing (in other areas, as search is already theirs), I can't believe they will always choose the "do no evil" path. What I think is a big problem is, how much Google will be able to do before its public perception starts to change?
- herval 15y ago
  Google and Apple are the new IBM/Xerox/Microsoft: big, slow and monopolistic, in their own ways. It's the cycle of life! There, I said it. Let's get downvoted together!
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
dpritchett 15y ago
Sullivan said he thought Google had enough permission to include links from networks like Twitter in its search results, Schmidt said: “That’s your opinion. If you could arrange a letter from Facebook and Twitter to us, that would be helpful.” [1] Sounds like the reporter expects Google to be able to scrape and index all tweets in real time. The whole point here is that (1) that's a big deal and (2) Twitter would prefer to charge dearly for that access if they allowed it at all. In negotiating terms, Google+ provides Google with a great BATNA in this situation where previously all they had was "pay whatever Twitter asks to index tweets or go without". Frankly, the "I believe you have permission, make it happen!" argument hinted at in the above quote sounds just as naive as the Congressman who says "We can do it! We have the technology!" about SOPA. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=o3FEILaTP3o#t=110s http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...
- rsynnott 15y ago
  Twitter does provide that access; see 'firehouse' here: https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-api/methods https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-api/methods I have no idea what you have to do to get access to it, though.
  - Locke1689 15y ago
    You have to have a contract with Twitter. Which they did. Until Twitter decided not to continue to renew their contract with Google. Now Twitter is complaining that Google isn't serving their results prominently. I honestly cannot begin to comprehend the level of cognitive dissonance needed to whine about this.
    - mnutt 15y ago
      I doubt that Twitter just told Google "Sorry, we don't want to do business with you." Most likely either Google wanted a better deal and couldn't get one, or Twitter raised their rates. Which is kind of what the Twitter rep is saying when they state that they continue to work with lots of other companies of various sizes.
jroseattle 15y ago
The posturing going on right now between Google, Facebook and Twitter is childish and hypocritical. Each company is only interested in leverage against each other, pure and simple. And when that approach stalls, they attempt to curry favor among the public with their situationally-convenient comments. The disingenuous collective here is ridiculous. Google and Twitter haggle over dollars, Twitter says no thanks, and Google says Twitter "took themselves out of search"? Google goes with what it has for real-time data (Google-plus) and incorporates that into search results, and Twitter calls it "bad for people"? For all the smart people involved in these organizations, I find this public conversation makes everyone involved look really small and petty. Similar to the game of adding "in bed" to every fortune from a fortune cookie, I now append "because we want to be in control" to every statement from Google, Facebook or Twitter.
- funkah 15y ago
  But... Twitter did take themselves out of the search results. I agree with your general comment that these firms have been making disingenuous comments in public and competing for leverage, but it is possible for one to be right and one to be wrong here.
  - jroseattle 15y ago
    True, Twitter did apply the tactical rel-nofollow. Technically, Google is correct in their statement. I don't care for how Google is positioning the statement, which sounds like Twitter is trying to hide its information from the public-at-large, and that Google is simply trying to deliver the best experience for the user. It's highly suspect for Google as the source of making those statements, as they benefit directly as a result of Twitter being included in their search results.
- calloc 15y ago
  Twitter is returning it's pages with all of the links marked as rel=nofollow. This means Google can't index the content that is linked by Twitter users.
  - deleted 15y ago
SeanLuke 15y ago
I don't understand why there is a deal at all. Why isn't the situation simply that Google indexes things (like tweets) unless they have a rel=nofollow?
- kanamekun 15y ago
  As of June last year, Twitter was churning out 155 million tweets a day: http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/07/gnip-twitter-firehose-realtime-data.html http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/07/gnip-twitter-firehose-realt... It's not easy to index find that much fresh data in anything resembling real-time. And with real-time data, seconds and minutes matter.
- niketdesai 15y ago
  I think you're right here. This is a non-issue. Google's core value proposition to users is search. If that can be improved by gathering content from the + network, they will (and should do it). If Google could have access to FB/Twitter content with consent, they would index and serve those results as well (it's fundamentally better for the user AND google). This whole thing is getting blown way out of proportion because people like to see giants fight.
nohat 15y ago
I do think we should be worried about letting google get too strong a walled garden. The most worrisome thing about google is that we depend upon so many google products, that it might be difficult to see what we are missing if they started to overly favor google offerings. I don't think google has gone there yet, but it is something to keep track of. That being said, twitter has no excuse to complain if they did simply remove themselves from google's results. I suspect that in fact they negotiated and got a better deal going exclusive with bing.
mladenkovacevic 15y ago
If Google had to pay every web-service out there for the privilege to index their otherwise free content, that could cost Google more money than is possible for them to spend. Then again, Twitter and Facebook are certainly large enough that some kind of deal could have been negotiated. But if they did that, would other social networks uproar in protest because now it's not just Google monopolizing their power.. it's the 3 largest websites out there doing it together.
- cbs 15y ago
  If Google had to pay every web-service out there for the privilege to index their otherwise free content, that could cost Google more money than is possible for them to spend. It would also be a disturbing direction to point the web in. The reason that google and other search engines are useful is because their bots can crawl the web like any user, they just also obey when a website asks them to stay away. Using robots.txt or nofollow to keep bots away unless they cough up cash concerns me greatly because it means they're turning what was a "count me out please" mechanism into a paywall. A paywall that the public doesn't see, but goes up between the public and finding public content with a search engine.
dredge 15y ago
Once upon a time it was possible to get a clean (not rel=nofollow) link from one's Twitter profile: http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/twitter-backlink-tip.html http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/twitter-backlink-tip.html Presumably for anti-spam reasons, Matt Cutts (of Google, and regular Hacker News commenter) implied in a tweet that Twitter would want to fix this: https://twitter.com/mattcutts/statuses/865610396 https://twitter.com/mattcutts/statuses/865610396 I think this implies - in my opinion rightly - that Google want or wanted links on Twitter to have the nofollow attribute set.
- abraham 15y ago
  Twitter was already implementing rel=nofollow. Matt was just letting them know they were doing it inconsistently.
grannyg00se 15y ago
Does it not make sense that Google would want to create as much synergy as possible between their offerings? I don't understand the concern here. It looks to me like they are going to use a small amount of screen space to let users know how many relevant Google+ links were found in the search. All of the Google+ links will be collapsed at the top. The other 95% of the page layout and result is the same.
espeed 15y ago
This fight is going to spill over to Facebook too -- Google has been trying to get Facebook to open up for a while.
Forrest7778 15y ago
I don't mean to go off topic - but for some reason the imagine of the Google 'G' and the Twitter 'T' just looked like the word 'Git' to me, so I was hopelessly waiting for more controversy involving Github to make it's way into the article... http://8.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/google-vs-twitter-360.jpg http://8.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/google-vs-twi...
rodh257 15y ago
I think that Twitter search is a real missed opportunity, I was hoping that Google with all their resources would be able to capitalize on it, but looks like Twitter isn't playing along. I did a university project (retreave.com) which used the streaming API to receive tweets, index the pages they linked to, and then provide a lucene based search engine for it. It's really cool to search for say 'design books' and see what your twitter network has reccomended that relates to it (and of course, the search doesn't just search the tweet text, but the page text as well). It ranked results based on social stature in addition to relevance (ie a link tweeted by lots of people is higher ranked) Unfortunately the User Streams API only scales to a few users, and I've been waiting for 9 months for an invite to the Site Streams Beta, but looks like they don't want me to make their search useful either.
mcgwiz 15y ago
It all depends on how you look at the overall system Google has created. If one considers the entirety of Google+ to be a mere component of Google Search (like the now-extinct Friends section of Netflix was), then one can better reconcile this situation with supposed fairness. After all, what's to stop Bing or Yahoo from creating a social component to their products which affect search? So the issue in is not one of ethics, but of how Google is marketing Google+. When all that existed was the +1 button, no one complained about ethics. Nothing has changed since then except a reworking of the information architecture of the same +1 data and processes. Google seems to believe that Google+ needs to exist independently of Search. If they're gonna stick with that route, they need to open the Search platform to 3rd party integration.

143 points by rhufnagel 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

dos1 15y ago

I can't help but be reminded of early 90's Microsoft when I read about what Google is doing lately. They're definitely on the "extend" phase of embrace, extend, extinguish. They're creating their own little insular community. Search results return Google+ results first and prominently at the top. Their browser has features that no other browser supports (native client, Dart etc). Their previously free APIs are now going to cost lots and lots of money (Maps). None of these things are bad in and of themselves, and all of it is certainly their choice. However, if this is the direction they're headed then I want no part of it. Edit: For those of you who find my comment off topic - did you even read the article or just the summary? Here are some relevant quotes: "Twitter had criticized Google’s new social search feature, which it calls Search plus Your World, on Tuesday. As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter, its statement said. We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone." "Sullivan told Schmidt he thought one feature of Search plus Your World, which recommends relevant people to follow on Google+ but not other networks, is the equivalent of saying ‘hey, you can only find information about finance on Google finance. You cannot find information about finance anywhere else." Clearly people are upset about Google trying to block out competitor's results. I believe my comment is completely ON topic. Edit 2: Wow, I had no idea how many Google apologists were out there. I had high hopes that the Hacker News community might actually be objective and not just fawn all over Google. Christ was I mistaken.

latch 15y ago
Your comment is unrelated to the article. Fine if you have a problem with stuff Google is doing, but on this topic they currently seem a lot more right than wrong.
- dos1 15y ago
  Did you even read the article? There are a number of quotes from people in the article that say what Google is doing here is definitely wrong.
  - latch 15y ago
    Did you read the article? One of the quotes is from Twitter. The other is a question a reporter ask and the entire point of the article is to answer the question. This is the article which I read: Twitter: Google is blocking us Reporter: Blocking twitter is evil Google: WTF? Twitter told us (and they really did) to block its links!?!
    - dos1 15y ago
      So to summarize: You agree that my comment was on topic, since clearly there are some who believe Google is in the wrong. Just because YOU don't agree with them doesn't mean my comment was off topic.
      - lonnyk 15y ago
        I think it is important to point out that Google seems to be saying they are willing to talk w/ the other networks about getting in the same position, but as of now those talks have not happened. Would Google have G+ suggestions AND Twitter suggestions presented in the same way if they still had an agreement w/ Twitter? Would the G+ suggestions be wrong if they still had the Twitter suggestions?
mchanson 15y ago
So hard to give up gmail habit though...
jamesgeck0 15y ago
When Twitter pulled out, Google didn't have a way to do social networking results. Facebook presumably turned down their offers. This is one of the big reasons why Google+ was built to begin with.
Karunamon 15y ago
>They're definitely on the "extend" phase of embrace, extend, extinguish. When you provide even a little evidence that this is their plan, this may be taken seriously. As it stands, they are still a huge champion of open standards (hardly a "phase"), and have raised the price on two of their more expensive services (app engine and maps) - both of which only affect developers, not end users. As it stands, your fears are FUD and nothing more.
- dos1 15y ago
  Just look at Chrome. On one hand, Google claims undying support for web standards, and on the other they're adding a bunch of non-standard features to their browser trying to get people tied in. This is very similar to MS and IE6 + ActiveX
  - dpritchett 15y ago
    What are these non-standard features? Are they open sourced? How hard would it be to fold them into another browser, especially one built on Webkit?
    - dos1 15y ago
      Dart, native client, Gears was in there for awhile.
      - dpritchett 15y ago
        Gears seems like a perfect example. It predated the HTML5 local storage when Google found such a tool useful. Now the standard's caught up and Gears has been yanked in favor of the standard. Dart and NaCl could conceivably lead to evil, but I like the history shown with Gears/HTML5.
      - abraham 15y ago
        Dart is not in any release of Chrome. You can download a special experimental Chromium release with Dart support but it is not in the nightly.
rryan 15y ago
> native client, Dart, etc. You forgot SPDY, WebRTC, etc. This is nothing like ActiveX. These are open-source technologies and other browsers are free and invited to implement them. They're trying to push the web forward.
- dos1 15y ago
  Sure they're free and open source. But they aren't STANDARDS. You seem to be unable to look objectively at the situation. While ActiveX was closed source, by extending the web with non standard technology the end result will be the same, open source or not.
  - yanw 15y ago
    But they are adhering to standards as well, more so than anyone else for that matter, point to an instance where they're not. Also it takes ages for stuff to get standardized, are you suggesting that no technology should be applicable until it's the standard? I see no issue in introducing new cool tech specially if it's opensource.
    - dos1 15y ago
      I agree, they do a great job following the standards. I love that. What I don't love is when they break away. That's my whole point - work with the standards body to get your new cool tech introduced. Don't just go rogue and do whatever you want, that's when problems arise.
      - yanw 15y ago
        "Breaking away" as you describe it sounds like innovation to me, and pacing innovation to standard bodies would kill it. I can't think of specifics but surly most of what is considered the standard today was once the experimentation of one company or one lab.
        dos1 15y ago
yanw 15y ago
This meme about Google turning into "old bad Microsoft" is a result of false dichotomy. Search+'s effect on the results page is peripheral, manifesting on the right pane and search suggestions, the main results are largely the same and there is a handy toggle to switch modes. Their browser is opensource, NaCl is opensource, Dart is opensource, the Microsoft stuff never was opensource. They started charging for the Maps API because some German mapping company complained to the EU that they can't compete with free.
- dos1 15y ago
  Oooh, false dichotomy. Because you used big words you must be right. See my below comment: Open source does NOT equal standards. They are different. Further, the picture in this article: http://mashable.com/2012/01/10/google-launches-social-search/ http://mashable.com/2012/01/10/google-launches-social-search... clearly shows your Google+ results directly on top of your normal results.
  - yanw 15y ago
    See my comment regarding standards: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3456594 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3456594 At the top it shows the number of public and private results, and the picture cluster always was there, they just added social relevancy to it.
- nudded 15y ago
  The fact that they are opensource has very little to do with it. They are trying to push certain technologies into certain directions under the cover of opensource. They are still in single control of the spec. This is not true with standard bodies where several companies can agree on it.
  - yanw 15y ago
    http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3456594 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3456594
  - jrockway 15y ago
mda 15y ago
Most of the comments simply points to flaws in your arguments. I advise you to think carefully about the issues raised before calling them "apologists" and "not objective".
- dos1 15y ago
  And I've tried to honestly reply to every comment that points out a flaw in my argument. I did think carefully before using the word apologist, but I've had too many downvotes to really believe that people are thinking critically. What I'm saying is NOT that Google is evil, but rather they're increasingly heading in a direction I don't like, for the reasons I've outlined.
  - Gigablah 15y ago
    "Oooh, false dichotomy. Because you used big words you must be right." "You seem to be unable to look objectively at the situation." "Wow, you're just being contrary to be contrary aren't you?" Seems like it has more to do with your attitude, don't you think?
  - Karunamon 15y ago
    >..but I've had too many downvotes to really believe that people are thinking critically Did you stop to think that maybe you're getting downvoted for nonsensical and wrongheaded arguments? We get it - you don't like Google. You just don't have a valid reason for doing so. You're entitled to your opinion, but not your facts.
- rwolf 15y ago
  "I'm being downvoted so people must not be thinking critically."
statictype 15y ago
Their browser has features that no other browser supports (native client, Dart etc). It's funny that you think these are bad things. Innovation happens by trying new things and pushing them out. If it sticks, great, if not, then it will die out. A ton of the technology today that we consider as 'standards' didn't start out that way. When Microsoft created XmlHttpRequest, were you complaining then that they were pushing out non-standard features that other browsers didn't have? Give credit to Google for trying to push the state-of-the-art in web technology forward.
- kenjackson 15y ago
  When Microsoft created XmlHttpRequest, were you complaining then that they were pushing out non-standard features that other browsers didn't have? In fact a lot of people did complain. This was the embrace, extend, extinguish attack that people had. Honestly, an absurd claim back then as well. I would think that you would try to make existing products so much better that you run your competitors out of business (or they improve so much that they stay competitive). But we have a culture where certain companies can do no wrong, while other companies can do no right. It's almost like asking a Republican in South Carolina about accomplishments by Obama -- doesn't really matter what he does, he'll be attacked. The dev space isn't so different.
drivebyacct2 15y ago
You have 200 karma and are complaining about "Google apologists" when your allegations of "extending" of "embrace, extend, extinguish" are new features in Chrome and charging for APIs like Maps (saw yesterday's article, I see). Come on.
- tdoggette 15y ago
  What on earth does his karma have to do with anything?
  - drivebyacct2 15y ago
    He has a relatively new account, he makes unfounded accusations and terribly stereotypical FUD about Google, is rude to people who write him replies in comments and then edits his comments mocking the "Hacker News community" because they disagreed and he wasn't able to explain his stance. The karma was a shot across the bow.
amatheus 15y ago
Apologists? I thought the term was fanboy - at least that's how an Apple "apologist" would be labeled here. The level of trust on Google that some people have is really astonishing. I think the problem is, for all their "do no evil" mantra, as they need the feel to keep growing (in other areas, as search is already theirs), I can't believe they will always choose the "do no evil" path. What I think is a big problem is, how much Google will be able to do before its public perception starts to change?
herval 15y ago
Google and Apple are the new IBM/Xerox/Microsoft: big, slow and monopolistic, in their own ways. It's the cycle of life! There, I said it. Let's get downvoted together!

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

dpritchett 15y ago

Sullivan said he thought Google had enough permission to include links from networks like Twitter in its search results, Schmidt said: “That’s your opinion. If you could arrange a letter from Facebook and Twitter to us, that would be helpful.” [1] Sounds like the reporter expects Google to be able to scrape and index all tweets in real time. The whole point here is that (1) that's a big deal and (2) Twitter would prefer to charge dearly for that access if they allowed it at all. In negotiating terms, Google+ provides Google with a great BATNA in this situation where previously all they had was "pay whatever Twitter asks to index tweets or go without". Frankly, the "I believe you have permission, make it happen!" argument hinted at in the above quote sounds just as naive as the Congressman who says "We can do it! We have the technology!" about SOPA. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=o3FEILaTP3o#t=110s http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...

rsynnott 15y ago
Twitter does provide that access; see 'firehouse' here: https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-api/methods https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming-api/methods I have no idea what you have to do to get access to it, though.
- Locke1689 15y ago
  You have to have a contract with Twitter. Which they did. Until Twitter decided not to continue to renew their contract with Google. Now Twitter is complaining that Google isn't serving their results prominently. I honestly cannot begin to comprehend the level of cognitive dissonance needed to whine about this.
  - mnutt 15y ago
    I doubt that Twitter just told Google "Sorry, we don't want to do business with you." Most likely either Google wanted a better deal and couldn't get one, or Twitter raised their rates. Which is kind of what the Twitter rep is saying when they state that they continue to work with lots of other companies of various sizes.

jroseattle 15y ago

The posturing going on right now between Google, Facebook and Twitter is childish and hypocritical. Each company is only interested in leverage against each other, pure and simple. And when that approach stalls, they attempt to curry favor among the public with their situationally-convenient comments. The disingenuous collective here is ridiculous. Google and Twitter haggle over dollars, Twitter says no thanks, and Google says Twitter "took themselves out of search"? Google goes with what it has for real-time data (Google-plus) and incorporates that into search results, and Twitter calls it "bad for people"? For all the smart people involved in these organizations, I find this public conversation makes everyone involved look really small and petty. Similar to the game of adding "in bed" to every fortune from a fortune cookie, I now append "because we want to be in control" to every statement from Google, Facebook or Twitter.

funkah 15y ago
But... Twitter did take themselves out of the search results. I agree with your general comment that these firms have been making disingenuous comments in public and competing for leverage, but it is possible for one to be right and one to be wrong here.
- jroseattle 15y ago
  True, Twitter did apply the tactical rel-nofollow. Technically, Google is correct in their statement. I don't care for how Google is positioning the statement, which sounds like Twitter is trying to hide its information from the public-at-large, and that Google is simply trying to deliver the best experience for the user. It's highly suspect for Google as the source of making those statements, as they benefit directly as a result of Twitter being included in their search results.
calloc 15y ago
Twitter is returning it's pages with all of the links marked as rel=nofollow. This means Google can't index the content that is linked by Twitter users.
- deleted 15y ago

SeanLuke 15y ago

I don't understand why there is a deal at all. Why isn't the situation simply that Google indexes things (like tweets) unless they have a rel=nofollow?

kanamekun 15y ago
As of June last year, Twitter was churning out 155 million tweets a day: http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/07/gnip-twitter-firehose-realtime-data.html http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/07/gnip-twitter-firehose-realt... It's not easy to index find that much fresh data in anything resembling real-time. And with real-time data, seconds and minutes matter.
niketdesai 15y ago
I think you're right here. This is a non-issue. Google's core value proposition to users is search. If that can be improved by gathering content from the + network, they will (and should do it). If Google could have access to FB/Twitter content with consent, they would index and serve those results as well (it's fundamentally better for the user AND google). This whole thing is getting blown way out of proportion because people like to see giants fight.

nohat 15y ago

I do think we should be worried about letting google get too strong a walled garden. The most worrisome thing about google is that we depend upon so many google products, that it might be difficult to see what we are missing if they started to overly favor google offerings. I don't think google has gone there yet, but it is something to keep track of. That being said, twitter has no excuse to complain if they did simply remove themselves from google's results. I suspect that in fact they negotiated and got a better deal going exclusive with bing.

mladenkovacevic 15y ago

If Google had to pay every web-service out there for the privilege to index their otherwise free content, that could cost Google more money than is possible for them to spend. Then again, Twitter and Facebook are certainly large enough that some kind of deal could have been negotiated. But if they did that, would other social networks uproar in protest because now it's not just Google monopolizing their power.. it's the 3 largest websites out there doing it together.

cbs 15y ago
If Google had to pay every web-service out there for the privilege to index their otherwise free content, that could cost Google more money than is possible for them to spend. It would also be a disturbing direction to point the web in. The reason that google and other search engines are useful is because their bots can crawl the web like any user, they just also obey when a website asks them to stay away. Using robots.txt or nofollow to keep bots away unless they cough up cash concerns me greatly because it means they're turning what was a "count me out please" mechanism into a paywall. A paywall that the public doesn't see, but goes up between the public and finding public content with a search engine.

dredge 15y ago

Once upon a time it was possible to get a clean (not rel=nofollow) link from one's Twitter profile: http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/twitter-backlink-tip.html http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/twitter-backlink-tip.html Presumably for anti-spam reasons, Matt Cutts (of Google, and regular Hacker News commenter) implied in a tweet that Twitter would want to fix this: https://twitter.com/mattcutts/statuses/865610396 https://twitter.com/mattcutts/statuses/865610396 I think this implies - in my opinion rightly - that Google want or wanted links on Twitter to have the nofollow attribute set.

abraham 15y ago
Twitter was already implementing rel=nofollow. Matt was just letting them know they were doing it inconsistently.

grannyg00se 15y ago

Does it not make sense that Google would want to create as much synergy as possible between their offerings? I don't understand the concern here. It looks to me like they are going to use a small amount of screen space to let users know how many relevant Google+ links were found in the search. All of the Google+ links will be collapsed at the top. The other 95% of the page layout and result is the same.

espeed 15y ago

This fight is going to spill over to Facebook too -- Google has been trying to get Facebook to open up for a while.

Forrest7778 15y ago

I don't mean to go off topic - but for some reason the imagine of the Google 'G' and the Twitter 'T' just looked like the word 'Git' to me, so I was hopelessly waiting for more controversy involving Github to make it's way into the article... http://8.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/google-vs-twitter-360.jpg http://8.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/google-vs-twi...

rodh257 15y ago

I think that Twitter search is a real missed opportunity, I was hoping that Google with all their resources would be able to capitalize on it, but looks like Twitter isn't playing along. I did a university project (retreave.com) which used the streaming API to receive tweets, index the pages they linked to, and then provide a lucene based search engine for it. It's really cool to search for say 'design books' and see what your twitter network has reccomended that relates to it (and of course, the search doesn't just search the tweet text, but the page text as well). It ranked results based on social stature in addition to relevance (ie a link tweeted by lots of people is higher ranked) Unfortunately the User Streams API only scales to a few users, and I've been waiting for 9 months for an invite to the Site Streams Beta, but looks like they don't want me to make their search useful either.

mcgwiz 15y ago

It all depends on how you look at the overall system Google has created. If one considers the entirety of Google+ to be a mere component of Google Search (like the now-extinct Friends section of Netflix was), then one can better reconcile this situation with supposed fairness. After all, what's to stop Bing or Yahoo from creating a social component to their products which affect search? So the issue in is not one of ethics, but of how Google is marketing Google+. When all that existed was the +1 button, no one complained about ethics. Nothing has changed since then except a reworking of the information architecture of the same +1 data and processes. Google seems to believe that Google+ needs to exist independently of Search. If they're gonna stick with that route, they need to open the Search platform to 3rd party integration.