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It is depressing that people dont recognize that Google has invented and perfected a parasitic business model that has destroyed the internet (and much of tech

It is depressing that people dont recognize that Google has invented and perfected a parasitic business model that has destroyed the internet (and much of tech with it) and this episode feels like just another turn of the downward spiral. The article aims to offer a preliminary analysis of whether Microsoft can become a better parasite: Grabbing the content people generate online, paying nothing, and using it deftly to serve advertisement on the basis of private behavioral traits that are gleaned by prying open and subverting the use of all pieces of IT people use. It is not too difficult by now to imagine alternate tech universes (Philip K Dick style) that have nothing to do with this nightmare, where more or less the same technologies empower individuals and companies and organizations rather than squeezing them dry. The combination of oligopoly status, moral laxity and political dysfunction means we are simply sitting around like sheep discussing whether a new butcher is about to get sharper knives.

azangru 4y ago
> It is depressing that people dont recognize that Google has invented and perfected a parasitic business model ... The article aims to offer a preliminary analysis of whether Microsoft can become a better parasite In this model, are end users who use it to search for information parasites as well? After all, they are consuming content that other people generate online, and usually pay nothing for it. And they love to look for — and find — what they are interested in. If Google didn't satisfy that need well, people wouldn't have preferred it, and it wouldn't have grown.
- fithisux 4y ago
  Google is there to put tolls. This is a parasitic model by definition. Search should be democratized by governments. It is central and should be for everybody. No control.
  - azangru 4y ago
    > Search should be democratized by governments. It is central and should be for everybody. No control. I am confused. Are you suggesting that governments should nationalize the search part of Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, etc.? Or that they should build their own high-quality search engines? And what do we do until they have? > No control. Why do you think governments wouldn't control search engines if they were responsible for providing them? > It is central and should be for everybody How is the current model (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, etc.) not for everybody?
    - jocaal 4y ago
      > Or that they should build their own high-quality search engines? That may already be happening https://openwebsearch.eu/ https://openwebsearch.eu/ The role of a government in a capatilistic society is to basically do the stuff that isn't profitable for corporations to do without exploiting the population. For example build roads, because if a corporation did that there would be tolls everywhere and it would be hard for poor people to improve their living standards if they couldn't economically move around. That seems to have happened on the internet. The internet is in the commons and everyone expects it to be free, the problem is that the infrastructure to navigate it was built by corporations and now we have to pay tolls through ads and trackers
    - fithisux 4y ago
      Nationalize or extinguish by creating their own.
  - linux-user 4y ago
    Nobody prevents government(s) from creating a search engine. Actually nobody stops anyone from creating a search engine. Also nobody stops anybody from using another search engine. The internet is the most level playing field and is more competitive than any other industry. Nowhere else is it as easy to create something new as a business and to switch services as a customer. If anything it's the customers fault and by extension a lack of education. So if you want to blame government then blame it for keeping its people dumb. And there you actually have a point.
  - sw104 4y ago
    Ah yes. Search provided by the Russian government to the Russian people, Chinese government to the Chinese people, British government to the British people, X government to the X people.. What could go wrong?
- college_physics 4y ago
  > usually pay nothing for it Users pay with their data. That is the whole point of the business model and it is obviously lucrative enough so that the entire tech infrastructure (devices, OS, browsers etc) can be repurposed to be a user data collection channel. If you want to find a real accomplice that is essential for the model to work, it is not the users, it is the advertisers. It takes two to tango in the adtech market. I don't dispute that search (in its various incarnations) is an essential service in a digitally interconnected world. There are countless ways to pay for it (as a digital public good, as a user subscription etc) that are fundamentally better than what we have. It is also obviously true that some decades ago Google innovated technically. A lot happened since and it wasn't positive. Normalizing it simply prolongs the agony.
  - MichaelZuo 4y ago
    Most user data is not worth anywhere near enough to keep the "entire tech infrastructure" running. User attention is worth more but even then I would be hesitant to say such a grand claim.
dietr1ch 4y ago
I grew up using the internet as a child and when Google came out it was way more a blessing than a parasite. The web was hard to navigate and you relied on webpages "befriending" each other and helping you navigate to similar pages. That was real navigation and it had terrible recall. Once google became the Internet's frontend everything was one or two hops away. It was awesome, and I think that it has evolved in a way that saves time with the snippets and knowledge graph panel at the expense of taking away clicks from sites that needed to serve their ads. Although today things are getting worse with walled gardens and SEO. A problem that the internet has not solved yet is how to keep webpages up while there's increasingly more content. Most sites were maintained at a loss by people, or leeching resources at a university or company. The closest "people" have got to fix this IMO is through P2P, but it got too focused on piracy and got a bad reputation with malware too. And I think we never had the infrastructure to serve and share webpages we visited. Sharing today is still a mess and we still depend on centralized distribution + caching (and that's dying with https, only big companies who are better off giving caching servers away to ISPs can do this). Ads came to "save" the internet from this problem. I really hate them and I wish we had a better model, but they seem a necessary evil as people just got used to believe that all digital things are free when they obviously cost something, and that still shows today in the apps stores.
- college_physics 4y ago
  > Ads came to "save" the internet from this problem. I really hate them and I wish we had a better model, but they seem a necessary evil as people just got used to believe that all digital things are free when they obviously cost something, and that still shows today in the apps stores. Advertising worked just fine for more than a century, ever since the invention of consumerist society. (How much of that is really necessary in a society that is pushing headlong into unsustainability is another, bigger story.) The disaster we have now in our hands is of a more immediate and crass nature. Think about it: there are algorithmic breakthroughs that can help everybody on the planet raise their level of information retrieval and the only discussion is which of the former or the current consumer tech oligopolies will use it best to push ads and how to double down on a bad design.
- PostOnce 4y ago
pharmakom 4y ago
I think I prefer a world with a search engine.
- ColinHayhurst 4y ago
  you are not alone, use of ours is up markedly since ChatGPT came out.
diceduckmonk 4y ago
What do you use since you don't use Google Search?
- college_physics 4y ago
  I use xapian a lot https://xapian.org/ https://xapian.org/
pffft8888 4y ago
"sitting around like sheep discussing whether a new butcher is about to get sharper knive" Speaking of that, I might as well provide some supprting evidence from a different part of the tech industry. Most people don't know that right now Blackrock and Coinbase are attempting a coup on the US dollar by seeking access to central bank liability for their stable coin? The Coinbase CEO even said it out loud that this year his stable coin will become the de facto central bank digital currency. I suspect that they have indirectly bribed someone at the Fed (how else does that work? esp since the Fed chairmen has come out strongly against stablecoins) and are basically trying to get the ability to get Fed loans at the Fed rate and loan out at the commercial bank rate without being a bank and by using a coin which they can mint themselves, so all the profits from interest create more reserves and the cycle keeps going. It is literally insane. The threat from Google and Microsoft to society pales in comparison. I may not have my understanding 100% correct but all banks are up in arms about it and the average person on HN has no clue this is happening. Just Google Blackrock, USDC and the Fed. The banks are calling it a backdoor CBDC.
- Cipater 4y ago
  Citation needed. Yes, Blackrock and Coinbase have partnered up to provide crypto trading access to Blackrock clients but how are they attempting a coup on the US dollar?
  - pffft8888 4y ago
    https://bpi.com/will-usdcs-blackrock-money-fund-create-a-back-door-cbdc-give-usdc-an-account-at-the-fed-or-both/ https://bpi.com/will-usdcs-blackrock-money-fund-create-a-bac... You'll have fuedal lords (aka billionaires) in control of the digital money supply. How is that not a coup?
futureshock 4y ago
Google started out noble, but was poisoned by its own success and by extension, poisoned everything it touched. The web, as a platform, is nearly dead. Walled garden phone apps are almost completely dominate. The revenue model is on such shaky ground that almost all remaining websites either went clickbait with a pox of ads or paywall. I would not be able to list more than 5 websites that survived Ads and SEO, perhaps only Wikipedia. These LLMs will be the end. They will capture enough of the user attention that the few remaining ad supported sites will be wiped out. “Content”, that low quality grist every site is filled with to capture users for a few seconds before they click on will become worthless, no different than the low quality crap the LLMs spew out. Finally, we will stop trying to keep the bloated corpse of the web alive and will move on. It will be the death of a dream. At least we can all let go and focus our energies on a new dream. Whatever that dream is, I hope high quality, human created art, knowledge, opinion and creativity is at the center of it.
- college_physics 4y ago
  I wish I could find something to disagree. If there is any hope it ultimately comes from the fact that the technologies we talk about are at various stages of commoditization. Maybe at some point the gap between what-is and what-can-be will be so stark that it will set in motion positive forces that are currently dormant.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

azangru 4y ago

> It is depressing that people dont recognize that Google has invented and perfected a parasitic business model ... The article aims to offer a preliminary analysis of whether Microsoft can become a better parasite In this model, are end users who use it to search for information parasites as well? After all, they are consuming content that other people generate online, and usually pay nothing for it. And they love to look for — and find — what they are interested in. If Google didn't satisfy that need well, people wouldn't have preferred it, and it wouldn't have grown.

fithisux 4y ago
Google is there to put tolls. This is a parasitic model by definition. Search should be democratized by governments. It is central and should be for everybody. No control.
- azangru 4y ago
  > Search should be democratized by governments. It is central and should be for everybody. No control. I am confused. Are you suggesting that governments should nationalize the search part of Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, etc.? Or that they should build their own high-quality search engines? And what do we do until they have? > No control. Why do you think governments wouldn't control search engines if they were responsible for providing them? > It is central and should be for everybody How is the current model (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, etc.) not for everybody?
  - jocaal 4y ago
    > Or that they should build their own high-quality search engines? That may already be happening https://openwebsearch.eu/ https://openwebsearch.eu/ The role of a government in a capatilistic society is to basically do the stuff that isn't profitable for corporations to do without exploiting the population. For example build roads, because if a corporation did that there would be tolls everywhere and it would be hard for poor people to improve their living standards if they couldn't economically move around. That seems to have happened on the internet. The internet is in the commons and everyone expects it to be free, the problem is that the infrastructure to navigate it was built by corporations and now we have to pay tolls through ads and trackers
  - fithisux 4y ago
    Nationalize or extinguish by creating their own.
- linux-user 4y ago
  Nobody prevents government(s) from creating a search engine. Actually nobody stops anyone from creating a search engine. Also nobody stops anybody from using another search engine. The internet is the most level playing field and is more competitive than any other industry. Nowhere else is it as easy to create something new as a business and to switch services as a customer. If anything it's the customers fault and by extension a lack of education. So if you want to blame government then blame it for keeping its people dumb. And there you actually have a point.
- sw104 4y ago
  Ah yes. Search provided by the Russian government to the Russian people, Chinese government to the Chinese people, British government to the British people, X government to the X people.. What could go wrong?
college_physics 4y ago
> usually pay nothing for it Users pay with their data. That is the whole point of the business model and it is obviously lucrative enough so that the entire tech infrastructure (devices, OS, browsers etc) can be repurposed to be a user data collection channel. If you want to find a real accomplice that is essential for the model to work, it is not the users, it is the advertisers. It takes two to tango in the adtech market. I don't dispute that search (in its various incarnations) is an essential service in a digitally interconnected world. There are countless ways to pay for it (as a digital public good, as a user subscription etc) that are fundamentally better than what we have. It is also obviously true that some decades ago Google innovated technically. A lot happened since and it wasn't positive. Normalizing it simply prolongs the agony.
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  Most user data is not worth anywhere near enough to keep the "entire tech infrastructure" running. User attention is worth more but even then I would be hesitant to say such a grand claim.

dietr1ch 4y ago

I grew up using the internet as a child and when Google came out it was way more a blessing than a parasite. The web was hard to navigate and you relied on webpages "befriending" each other and helping you navigate to similar pages. That was real navigation and it had terrible recall. Once google became the Internet's frontend everything was one or two hops away. It was awesome, and I think that it has evolved in a way that saves time with the snippets and knowledge graph panel at the expense of taking away clicks from sites that needed to serve their ads. Although today things are getting worse with walled gardens and SEO. A problem that the internet has not solved yet is how to keep webpages up while there's increasingly more content. Most sites were maintained at a loss by people, or leeching resources at a university or company. The closest "people" have got to fix this IMO is through P2P, but it got too focused on piracy and got a bad reputation with malware too. And I think we never had the infrastructure to serve and share webpages we visited. Sharing today is still a mess and we still depend on centralized distribution + caching (and that's dying with https, only big companies who are better off giving caching servers away to ISPs can do this). Ads came to "save" the internet from this problem. I really hate them and I wish we had a better model, but they seem a necessary evil as people just got used to believe that all digital things are free when they obviously cost something, and that still shows today in the apps stores.

college_physics 4y ago
> Ads came to "save" the internet from this problem. I really hate them and I wish we had a better model, but they seem a necessary evil as people just got used to believe that all digital things are free when they obviously cost something, and that still shows today in the apps stores. Advertising worked just fine for more than a century, ever since the invention of consumerist society. (How much of that is really necessary in a society that is pushing headlong into unsustainability is another, bigger story.) The disaster we have now in our hands is of a more immediate and crass nature. Think about it: there are algorithmic breakthroughs that can help everybody on the planet raise their level of information retrieval and the only discussion is which of the former or the current consumer tech oligopolies will use it best to push ads and how to double down on a bad design.
PostOnce 4y ago

pharmakom 4y ago

I think I prefer a world with a search engine.

ColinHayhurst 4y ago
you are not alone, use of ours is up markedly since ChatGPT came out.

diceduckmonk 4y ago

What do you use since you don't use Google Search?

college_physics 4y ago
I use xapian a lot https://xapian.org/ https://xapian.org/

pffft8888 4y ago

"sitting around like sheep discussing whether a new butcher is about to get sharper knive" Speaking of that, I might as well provide some supprting evidence from a different part of the tech industry. Most people don't know that right now Blackrock and Coinbase are attempting a coup on the US dollar by seeking access to central bank liability for their stable coin? The Coinbase CEO even said it out loud that this year his stable coin will become the de facto central bank digital currency. I suspect that they have indirectly bribed someone at the Fed (how else does that work? esp since the Fed chairmen has come out strongly against stablecoins) and are basically trying to get the ability to get Fed loans at the Fed rate and loan out at the commercial bank rate without being a bank and by using a coin which they can mint themselves, so all the profits from interest create more reserves and the cycle keeps going. It is literally insane. The threat from Google and Microsoft to society pales in comparison. I may not have my understanding 100% correct but all banks are up in arms about it and the average person on HN has no clue this is happening. Just Google Blackrock, USDC and the Fed. The banks are calling it a backdoor CBDC.

Cipater 4y ago
Citation needed. Yes, Blackrock and Coinbase have partnered up to provide crypto trading access to Blackrock clients but how are they attempting a coup on the US dollar?
- pffft8888 4y ago
  https://bpi.com/will-usdcs-blackrock-money-fund-create-a-back-door-cbdc-give-usdc-an-account-at-the-fed-or-both/ https://bpi.com/will-usdcs-blackrock-money-fund-create-a-bac... You'll have fuedal lords (aka billionaires) in control of the digital money supply. How is that not a coup?

futureshock 4y ago

Google started out noble, but was poisoned by its own success and by extension, poisoned everything it touched. The web, as a platform, is nearly dead. Walled garden phone apps are almost completely dominate. The revenue model is on such shaky ground that almost all remaining websites either went clickbait with a pox of ads or paywall. I would not be able to list more than 5 websites that survived Ads and SEO, perhaps only Wikipedia. These LLMs will be the end. They will capture enough of the user attention that the few remaining ad supported sites will be wiped out. “Content”, that low quality grist every site is filled with to capture users for a few seconds before they click on will become worthless, no different than the low quality crap the LLMs spew out. Finally, we will stop trying to keep the bloated corpse of the web alive and will move on. It will be the death of a dream. At least we can all let go and focus our energies on a new dream. Whatever that dream is, I hope high quality, human created art, knowledge, opinion and creativity is at the center of it.

college_physics 4y ago
I wish I could find something to disagree. If there is any hope it ultimately comes from the fact that the technologies we talk about are at various stages of commoditization. Maybe at some point the gap between what-is and what-can-be will be so stark that it will set in motion positive forces that are currently dormant.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]