4 ms·

I believe this quote explains the situation well; "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

jjoonathan 3y ago
I like this one too: > The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. - Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine
- tommica 3y ago
  Damn, now I feel like a fool. Of course google is in the ad business, but I never considered that they could compromise the quality of their results to boost up ads, but it's absolutely possible.
  - candiodari 3y ago
    The central defining quality of Google search was that they didn't do that. That's what that quote refers to. Google wasn't the first search engine. It wasn't the best, at least not initially. But Google, the first decade, refused to destroy it's own relevance for a buck, and all the others did. From Yahoo to Altavista. It now appears it was a delay tactic. 2-3 ads on the side, next to 10-20 "organic" search results, like Google in 2005, was great and nice. And it's certainly true that occasionally the ads were useful. The ads, like the search results, were high quality. Now Google barely has one organic search result visible. I just checked for the search "credit card", which I know is bad, but ... The first organic search result is the fifth, with only 2 results actually visible when you do the search, both "sponsored". 3 and 4, not on the first page, are sponsored too. And if you don't want commercial search results for that search (excluding wikipedia that seems to get very special treatment) the first organic result, the first result not trying to get you to put yourself into debt ... well, I gave up after scrolling though at least 20 pages. It just isn't there anymore. Hell, it isn't even that long ago that in-line ads were on the first page of Google ... now they take up 80% of the space on every page of Google results. So organic results have been banned from the 2nd page to at least the 21st page or so. There's no more point to "Googling". Google now really does look like Yahoo looked in 2000. And last year they did layoffs, just like yahoo. What I don't understand is how investors fool themselves into believing the stock price won't do the exact same thing. 5-10 more years and Google gets sold to Verizon for 10 billion. And why? Because no manager at Google will risk their career on getting 1% less out of their customers than they did last quarter ... and they do that like everyone else: by accepting every last dollar every last scummy advertiser makes to Google.
sayrer 3y ago
I think it can be true in some situations. If you think of magazines, it would be a disappointment for Rolling Stone to contain no ads. Same for camera magazines. News content really doesn't benefit, though. Just clickbait stuff.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  > If you think of magazines, it would be a disappointment for Rolling Stone to contain no ads. I'll bite…because they're pretty? Or because how else would one stay on top of the latest Axe body spray releases?
  - saalweachter 3y ago
    Woodworking magazines are 1/3 about shop organization, 1/3 about project ideas & techniques, and 1/3 about the latest and oldest woodworking tools and where to buy them.
  - keepper 3y ago
    Because who then pays for the content? Time and time again, the average person has shown that they will rather spend X times more on a trivial thing than content. This is more acute on hard news. Where a single page article may cost 100k to produce, yet wont be able to be monetized per its "cost to produce". So yes, it would be a disappointment to lose "great content". now, here lies in the kicker. You get to decide great content with your patronage ( or lack there of)
- chankstein38 3y ago
  I don't know man I've never turned to an ad in a magazine and been thankful it was there. Ads could evaporate completely from existence tomorrow and I'd miss absolutely nothing.
  - lesuorac 3y ago
    Isn't that almost the whole point of the magazine? I guess for something a bit more catch-all like "Rolling Stone" Ads would detract. But for something like USA Hockey, honestly the Ads are more interesting than half the actual content. Although seeing the same 4 ads for home skating rinks has gotten old. Although I guess this would be more akin to searching Google for "new hockey products" and then it would make a lot of sense to return pure ads.

jjoonathan 3y ago

I like this one too: > The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. - Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine

tommica 3y ago
Damn, now I feel like a fool. Of course google is in the ad business, but I never considered that they could compromise the quality of their results to boost up ads, but it's absolutely possible.
- candiodari 3y ago
  The central defining quality of Google search was that they didn't do that. That's what that quote refers to. Google wasn't the first search engine. It wasn't the best, at least not initially. But Google, the first decade, refused to destroy it's own relevance for a buck, and all the others did. From Yahoo to Altavista. It now appears it was a delay tactic. 2-3 ads on the side, next to 10-20 "organic" search results, like Google in 2005, was great and nice. And it's certainly true that occasionally the ads were useful. The ads, like the search results, were high quality. Now Google barely has one organic search result visible. I just checked for the search "credit card", which I know is bad, but ... The first organic search result is the fifth, with only 2 results actually visible when you do the search, both "sponsored". 3 and 4, not on the first page, are sponsored too. And if you don't want commercial search results for that search (excluding wikipedia that seems to get very special treatment) the first organic result, the first result not trying to get you to put yourself into debt ... well, I gave up after scrolling though at least 20 pages. It just isn't there anymore. Hell, it isn't even that long ago that in-line ads were on the first page of Google ... now they take up 80% of the space on every page of Google results. So organic results have been banned from the 2nd page to at least the 21st page or so. There's no more point to "Googling". Google now really does look like Yahoo looked in 2000. And last year they did layoffs, just like yahoo. What I don't understand is how investors fool themselves into believing the stock price won't do the exact same thing. 5-10 more years and Google gets sold to Verizon for 10 billion. And why? Because no manager at Google will risk their career on getting 1% less out of their customers than they did last quarter ... and they do that like everyone else: by accepting every last dollar every last scummy advertiser makes to Google.

sayrer 3y ago

I think it can be true in some situations. If you think of magazines, it would be a disappointment for Rolling Stone to contain no ads. Same for camera magazines. News content really doesn't benefit, though. Just clickbait stuff.

CharlesW 3y ago
> If you think of magazines, it would be a disappointment for Rolling Stone to contain no ads. I'll bite…because they're pretty? Or because how else would one stay on top of the latest Axe body spray releases?
- saalweachter 3y ago
  Woodworking magazines are 1/3 about shop organization, 1/3 about project ideas & techniques, and 1/3 about the latest and oldest woodworking tools and where to buy them.
- keepper 3y ago
  Because who then pays for the content? Time and time again, the average person has shown that they will rather spend X times more on a trivial thing than content. This is more acute on hard news. Where a single page article may cost 100k to produce, yet wont be able to be monetized per its "cost to produce". So yes, it would be a disappointment to lose "great content". now, here lies in the kicker. You get to decide great content with your patronage ( or lack there of)
chankstein38 3y ago
I don't know man I've never turned to an ad in a magazine and been thankful it was there. Ads could evaporate completely from existence tomorrow and I'd miss absolutely nothing.
- lesuorac 3y ago
  Isn't that almost the whole point of the magazine? I guess for something a bit more catch-all like "Rolling Stone" Ads would detract. But for something like USA Hockey, honestly the Ads are more interesting than half the actual content. Although seeing the same 4 ads for home skating rinks has gotten old. Although I guess this would be more akin to searching Google for "new hockey products" and then it would make a lot of sense to return pure ads.