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95% of those people have left Google because the ethics and safety teams prevented them from releasing any products based on their research. We have those ex-Go

95% of those people have left Google because the ethics and safety teams prevented them from releasing any products based on their research. We have those ex-Googlers to thank for ChatGPT, Character.ai, Inceptive, ... which you'll notice are not Google products but rather competitors.

panarky 3y ago
I, for one, appreciate a megacorp purposely sacrificing revenue when they're not confident that the negative externalities of that revenue would be minimized. Google could have built a search engine where paid results were indistinguishable from organic results, but the negative externalities of that were too great. Google could have remained in China, but the negative externalities of developing and managing a censorship engine were too great. Google could have productized AI before the risks were controlled, but they sacrificed revenue and first-mover advantage to be more responsible, and to protect their reputation. This behavior is so rare, it's hard to think of another megacorp that would do that. Google's far from perfect, they've made ethical lapses, which their competitors love to yell and scream about, but their competitors wouldn't hold up well under the same scrutiny.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  > Google could have built a search engine where paid results were indistinguishable from organic results, but the negative externalities of that were too great. Have you not used Google search in the past 5 years?
  - panarky 3y ago
    When it says "sponsored" in bold text, prominently displayed right at the top of the result, you know it's an ad. Before Google, search engines didn't do this. Paid results were indistinguishable from organic results. Here's an example --> https://imgur.com/a/bSJTBeD https://imgur.com/a/bSJTBeD If you have a counter-example, please share!
    - illiarian 3y ago
      > When it says "sponsored" in bold text, prominently displayed right at the top of the result, you know it's an ad. Prominently? Bold text? Here's how they repeatedly made ads indistinguishable from search results: https://atechnocratblog.wordpress.com/2016/07/26/color-fade-a-visual-history-of-google-ad-labeling-in-search-results/ https://atechnocratblog.wordpress.com/2016/07/26/color-fade-... Or this: https://twitter.com/garybernhardt/status/1648496387640938496 https://twitter.com/garybernhardt/status/1648496387640938496 To quote from the above, here's what they said in the beginning: "we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers"
      - kkkkkkk 3y ago
        The tweet you linked was from an outage that lasted 30 minutes, it's pretty disingenuous of you to try and pass that off as status quo. I do agree however that the labeling has gotten less prominent over time. I don't however agree that it has become subtle enough to considered indistinguishable from search results.
        illiarian 3y ago
        > I don't however agree that it has become subtle enough to considered indistinguishable from search results. This is what it looks like on mobile. A tiny "sponsored" text is the only thing that distinguishes ads from search results: https://imgur.com/a/WOk4NdR https://imgur.com/a/WOk4NdR It's deliberately designed this way compared to what it once was https://atechnocratblog.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/history-google-ad-backgrounds-labels.png https://atechnocratblog.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/history-... To deny this is quite bizarre
    - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
      It sounds like you were either not around or didn't use Google in the early 00s. Back then, there was a very clear, bright color difference between ads and organic search results: a yellow bar at the top with at most two ads, and a side bar. But organic results were easy to identify and took up the majority of screen real estate. Now, when I search any even slightly remotely commercial search term on mobile, about the entire first page and a half of results are ads. Yes, they're identified with a "Sponsored" message, but as you can see from the "evolution" link the other commenter replied, this was obviously done to make the visual treatment between ads and organic results less clear. The reason I'm thrilled about Google finally getting competition in their bread-and-butter is not because I want them to fail, but I want them to stop sucking so bad. For about the past 10 or so years Google has gotten so comfy with their monopoly position that the vast majority of their main search updates have been extremely hostile to both end users and their advertisers as Google continually demands more and more of "the Google tax" by pushing organic results down the page. In the meantime I've switched to Bing, not because I think Microsoft is so much better, because I desperately want multiple search alternatives. Edit: Great article from a couple years ago about how Google tried to make ads even more indistinguishable from organic results: https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2020/1/23/21078343/google-ad-desktop-design-change-favicon-icon-ftc-guidelines https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2020/1/23/21078343/google-ad-d...

panarky 3y ago

I, for one, appreciate a megacorp purposely sacrificing revenue when they're not confident that the negative externalities of that revenue would be minimized. Google could have built a search engine where paid results were indistinguishable from organic results, but the negative externalities of that were too great. Google could have remained in China, but the negative externalities of developing and managing a censorship engine were too great. Google could have productized AI before the risks were controlled, but they sacrificed revenue and first-mover advantage to be more responsible, and to protect their reputation. This behavior is so rare, it's hard to think of another megacorp that would do that. Google's far from perfect, they've made ethical lapses, which their competitors love to yell and scream about, but their competitors wouldn't hold up well under the same scrutiny.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
> Google could have built a search engine where paid results were indistinguishable from organic results, but the negative externalities of that were too great. Have you not used Google search in the past 5 years?
- panarky 3y ago
  When it says "sponsored" in bold text, prominently displayed right at the top of the result, you know it's an ad. Before Google, search engines didn't do this. Paid results were indistinguishable from organic results. Here's an example --> https://imgur.com/a/bSJTBeD https://imgur.com/a/bSJTBeD If you have a counter-example, please share!
  - illiarian 3y ago
    > When it says "sponsored" in bold text, prominently displayed right at the top of the result, you know it's an ad. Prominently? Bold text? Here's how they repeatedly made ads indistinguishable from search results: https://atechnocratblog.wordpress.com/2016/07/26/color-fade-a-visual-history-of-google-ad-labeling-in-search-results/ https://atechnocratblog.wordpress.com/2016/07/26/color-fade-... Or this: https://twitter.com/garybernhardt/status/1648496387640938496 https://twitter.com/garybernhardt/status/1648496387640938496 To quote from the above, here's what they said in the beginning: "we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers"
    - kkkkkkk 3y ago
      The tweet you linked was from an outage that lasted 30 minutes, it's pretty disingenuous of you to try and pass that off as status quo. I do agree however that the labeling has gotten less prominent over time. I don't however agree that it has become subtle enough to considered indistinguishable from search results.
      - illiarian 3y ago
        > I don't however agree that it has become subtle enough to considered indistinguishable from search results. This is what it looks like on mobile. A tiny "sponsored" text is the only thing that distinguishes ads from search results: https://imgur.com/a/WOk4NdR https://imgur.com/a/WOk4NdR It's deliberately designed this way compared to what it once was https://atechnocratblog.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/history-google-ad-backgrounds-labels.png https://atechnocratblog.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/history-... To deny this is quite bizarre
  - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    It sounds like you were either not around or didn't use Google in the early 00s. Back then, there was a very clear, bright color difference between ads and organic search results: a yellow bar at the top with at most two ads, and a side bar. But organic results were easy to identify and took up the majority of screen real estate. Now, when I search any even slightly remotely commercial search term on mobile, about the entire first page and a half of results are ads. Yes, they're identified with a "Sponsored" message, but as you can see from the "evolution" link the other commenter replied, this was obviously done to make the visual treatment between ads and organic results less clear. The reason I'm thrilled about Google finally getting competition in their bread-and-butter is not because I want them to fail, but I want them to stop sucking so bad. For about the past 10 or so years Google has gotten so comfy with their monopoly position that the vast majority of their main search updates have been extremely hostile to both end users and their advertisers as Google continually demands more and more of "the Google tax" by pushing organic results down the page. In the meantime I've switched to Bing, not because I think Microsoft is so much better, because I desperately want multiple search alternatives. Edit: Great article from a couple years ago about how Google tried to make ads even more indistinguishable from organic results: https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2020/1/23/21078343/google-ad-desktop-design-change-favicon-icon-ftc-guidelines https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2020/1/23/21078343/google-ad-d...