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I don't think you deserve any downvotes, but there is also somewhat of a tragedy of the commons effect at play. I hear people Google "Facebook" to find the Fac

I don't think you deserve any downvotes, but there is also somewhat of a tragedy of the commons effect at play. I hear people Google "Facebook" to find the Facebook login page. No doubt, Facebook has ads for that search so that people click the right link. This ends up being expensive; people should have just clicked their bookmark, but don't really understand URLs, so there is just a tax on big companies to have that link available. I don't think this is particularly evil, but I also don't think it's amazing. At the end of the day, you're providing value for not making people type "www" and "com", but many think that should just be free. (Of course, before search was integrated into the address bar, I feel like typing "example" in there went to www.example.com. That feature mysteriously disappeared when browser vendors realized you could make money by displaying an unrelated webpage with ads instead.) Meanwhile the alternative is mobile apps and an icon on your homescreen, an effect that makes Apple and Google rich for taking a % of the revenue from those apps, and one of the largest job programs ever for software engineers. At the end of the day, I can see why people are uncomfortable with the whole situation, but I also don't see an easy solution. It is fun to railroad rich people in front of Congress, but at the end of the day, what really changes? The rich person has slightly less money, the politicians get a photo op, and some lawyer has a little more cash. Only better technology will end today's quirks. (Remember when Microsoft got sued for anti-trust violations? Did the government end IE's reign on the Internet, or did Chrome?)

wlesieutre 3y ago
> Meanwhile the alternative is mobile apps and an icon on your homescreen, an effect that makes Apple and Google rich for taking a % of the revenue from those apps, and one of the largest job programs ever for software engineers. Not to mention that you suffer the same problem in the App Store when you go searching for the Faceboook app. They have to bid for ads against competitors that want to show up when users try to find Facebook in the app store. Though at least it's only the one time and then it's installed, unlike users who don't add .com to their URL bar and search for Facebook every time instead.
- jrockway 3y ago
  Something I think about a lot is what the world would look like without advertising, i.e., you'd have to make every decision on its merits, and never rely on bought opinions. Like imagine you walk into a grocery store, and every shelf is lined with plain cardboard boxes with the name of the product on it ("chocolate-covered breakfast cereal") and a nutrition label. You walk in and there is nothing other than the merits of the product itself to guide your purchasing decision. Nothing else would influence you. Would that world be better than today's explosion of colors and brands and talking heads and size 100 font "NEW FORMULA!!!"? In today's world, if you're not sure what to buy, you just pick the thing with the most colorful box or whatever you heard about on TV, and you probably end up with something that's fine. (Occasionally, the thing you heard about on TV is actually good, and you wouldn't have thought to buy it otherwise. It's almost a win-win though I am somewhat hesitant to use that term to describe advertising on HN ;) Advertising is that; you don't care what brand of light switch you buy, you just want a light switch, so there is a race to convince someone you trust to recommend their brand to you. They pay someone money, you buy a light switch, it switches your lights, you're happy, they're happy, and this random third party ad company is happy. Multiple people are bidding against each other for this recommendation, and so advertising ends up costing a lot. (You, of course, pay the cost, not the company doing the advertising. But if everyone is doing it, it's not like you can choose.) That's the app store thing; Apple prides itself on how every iPhone app is the greatest thing ever created, and because sometimes that's true, you trust them. Well, what if they just approve everything and let people pay for recommendations? Now you have ads in the app store. Someone looking for a random app gets a random app. They're probably happy with their $0.99 purchase. They never think about it again and move on with their life, and Apple's execs get a cooler yacht, and some random software engineer also got 10 cents or whatever. This all seems a little wrong -- ideas and products should only be popular because of their merit in the global marketplace of ideas -- but is it actually? It's really just making a lot of money from making decisions that aren't worth making. It does sound really dystopian... don't think about anything, just CONSUME what we say to consume... but is researching light switches so that the true best light switch maker gets your money actually better than spending an hour playing with your dog or whatever? I don't know. It's difficult. I should think about it less.
willsmith72 3y ago
That makes it sound like we just need a new UX for web browsing without a traditional search engine. It doesn't sound unrealistic to be able to recreate the "app homescreen icon" experience for the web. One of the biggest blockers is that the speed of google search (and success rate for things like "facebook login") means it's barely even a pain point for users, or not one they're aware of anyway. At the end of the day I strongly believe the web is a better future for the world. Letting the future of the internet sit behind 2 mega gatekeepers seems to be an objectively worse path looking 10+ years down the line.
vidarh 3y ago
>I hear people Google "Facebook" to find the Facebook login page. No doubt, Facebook has ads for that search so that people click the right link. This reminds me how back in the dark ages, Yahoo! Search got sufficient searches for Google that someone decided it was worthwhile to return a second search box in the results before the real results to trick those users into inputting their real search instead of clicking the link to Google... Users failing to remember trivial domains is sadly not a new thing...
20after4 3y ago
Firefox, not Chrome, dethroned IE. It was just short lived because very soon after, Google hired half the Firefox team away from Mozilla and created Chrome.
- Gud 3y ago
  That’s not really why people switched to Chrome. Google started to push Chrome aggressively on Google.com.
  - 20after4 3y ago
    Yes this is also true. I was pointing out that people switched to Firefox before they switched to Chrome. Chrome didn't even exist for quite some time after Firefox was already thriving and putting a serious dent in IE's dominance.

wlesieutre 3y ago

> Meanwhile the alternative is mobile apps and an icon on your homescreen, an effect that makes Apple and Google rich for taking a % of the revenue from those apps, and one of the largest job programs ever for software engineers. Not to mention that you suffer the same problem in the App Store when you go searching for the Faceboook app. They have to bid for ads against competitors that want to show up when users try to find Facebook in the app store. Though at least it's only the one time and then it's installed, unlike users who don't add .com to their URL bar and search for Facebook every time instead.

jrockway 3y ago
Something I think about a lot is what the world would look like without advertising, i.e., you'd have to make every decision on its merits, and never rely on bought opinions. Like imagine you walk into a grocery store, and every shelf is lined with plain cardboard boxes with the name of the product on it ("chocolate-covered breakfast cereal") and a nutrition label. You walk in and there is nothing other than the merits of the product itself to guide your purchasing decision. Nothing else would influence you. Would that world be better than today's explosion of colors and brands and talking heads and size 100 font "NEW FORMULA!!!"? In today's world, if you're not sure what to buy, you just pick the thing with the most colorful box or whatever you heard about on TV, and you probably end up with something that's fine. (Occasionally, the thing you heard about on TV is actually good, and you wouldn't have thought to buy it otherwise. It's almost a win-win though I am somewhat hesitant to use that term to describe advertising on HN ;) Advertising is that; you don't care what brand of light switch you buy, you just want a light switch, so there is a race to convince someone you trust to recommend their brand to you. They pay someone money, you buy a light switch, it switches your lights, you're happy, they're happy, and this random third party ad company is happy. Multiple people are bidding against each other for this recommendation, and so advertising ends up costing a lot. (You, of course, pay the cost, not the company doing the advertising. But if everyone is doing it, it's not like you can choose.) That's the app store thing; Apple prides itself on how every iPhone app is the greatest thing ever created, and because sometimes that's true, you trust them. Well, what if they just approve everything and let people pay for recommendations? Now you have ads in the app store. Someone looking for a random app gets a random app. They're probably happy with their $0.99 purchase. They never think about it again and move on with their life, and Apple's execs get a cooler yacht, and some random software engineer also got 10 cents or whatever. This all seems a little wrong -- ideas and products should only be popular because of their merit in the global marketplace of ideas -- but is it actually? It's really just making a lot of money from making decisions that aren't worth making. It does sound really dystopian... don't think about anything, just CONSUME what we say to consume... but is researching light switches so that the true best light switch maker gets your money actually better than spending an hour playing with your dog or whatever? I don't know. It's difficult. I should think about it less.

willsmith72 3y ago

That makes it sound like we just need a new UX for web browsing without a traditional search engine. It doesn't sound unrealistic to be able to recreate the "app homescreen icon" experience for the web. One of the biggest blockers is that the speed of google search (and success rate for things like "facebook login") means it's barely even a pain point for users, or not one they're aware of anyway. At the end of the day I strongly believe the web is a better future for the world. Letting the future of the internet sit behind 2 mega gatekeepers seems to be an objectively worse path looking 10+ years down the line.

vidarh 3y ago

>I hear people Google "Facebook" to find the Facebook login page. No doubt, Facebook has ads for that search so that people click the right link. This reminds me how back in the dark ages, Yahoo! Search got sufficient searches for Google that someone decided it was worthwhile to return a second search box in the results before the real results to trick those users into inputting their real search instead of clicking the link to Google... Users failing to remember trivial domains is sadly not a new thing...

20after4 3y ago

Firefox, not Chrome, dethroned IE. It was just short lived because very soon after, Google hired half the Firefox team away from Mozilla and created Chrome.

Gud 3y ago
That’s not really why people switched to Chrome. Google started to push Chrome aggressively on Google.com.
- 20after4 3y ago
  Yes this is also true. I was pointing out that people switched to Firefox before they switched to Chrome. Chrome didn't even exist for quite some time after Firefox was already thriving and putting a serious dent in IE's dominance.