8 ms·

Not a great optics. Everyone knows Google has been swirling the tank for over a decade for actual web search and AI will likely finish the job. The main vector

Not a great optics. Everyone knows Google has been swirling the tank for over a decade for actual web search and AI will likely finish the job. The main vector I look at is how much control does the user have over the results they see? That has been in decline at least since Google+ took away the + operator. Remember "did you mean" results? Now we get "let's assume you meant" with fewer and fewer ways to force "actually I did mean..." This is the obvious trajectory for any corp that needs to show quarter over quarter growth for 20+ years, at some point you hollow out from the middle until the whole thing collapses.

mahkoh 3y ago
>Everyone knows Google has been swirling the tank for over a decade for actual web search and AI will likely finish the job. Everyone knows this? GOOG stock is near an all time high with search being more than 50% of its revenue.
- dubcanada 3y ago
  A few things. 1. GOOGL is the voting share stock ticker, not GOOG. GOOG is nothing more than class c shares. 2. Search as a line item is more than 50%, but search is not searching, searching itself provides not much value, ads are where Google makes its money. 3. A stock being near all time high has no indication that it's a company that is "swirling the tank". Often a stock does not decrease until after a series of bad earnings/negative outlook. But with that said, there is no evidence at the moment that Google is not doing great.
- billjings 3y ago
  This discussion is partly about how Google alters search results to increase revenue. It would stand to reason that they might also improve their stock price and search revenue by doing this, while also degrading search quality. As for why their market share has not degraded as a result, it is likely that the folks currently prosecuting Google for antitrust violations have the best argument for why this might be so.
- mrtksn 3y ago
  The stock price is a number representing the recent bets on its future price. It really doesn’t tell much more than that.
- philistine 3y ago
  A stock price does not mean that everything the company is doing is perfect. It can reasonably mean « their search is getting worse but they’ve found very good ways to make more money from worse search so I’m very happy and will buy more stock».
failbuffer 3y ago
I remember when you could query Google for x and it would simply say it didn't have any results for x. It was such a great feeling to get a frank, honest reply instead of being bullshitted with results that didn't have x in then.
- mynameishere 3y ago
  My favorite is when you fight and fight and fight, looking for something and then you finally manage to narrow the results down to what you wanted, and it says (right above the correct result): "It looks like there aren't many great matches for your search" Good job, Goog! I remember when it was new, and one of the killer features was the dead-simple "innovation" of having AND searches instead of OR. To this day, I think that any search engine that queried based upon the exact provided search terms would eat their lunch. Probably not, but I would like it.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Google search is optimized to deliver more ads. Providing the result you want quickly is against this.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    I'm not sure how the search engine you suggest would filter out noise. There is just an ocean of generated content that exists out there filled with just about every string you could imagine that attempts to get you to click on a link so they can show an ad. The modern internet is full of hot garbage.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - mindslight 3y ago
      Any page with ads, remove it from the results. I'm not saying this would in any way be in Google's interest, but I'd love to see a search engine that did this.
ToucanLoucan 3y ago
> The main vector I look at is how much control does the user have over the results they see? This has been the trend in so much technology and I think that's why there's such a slow, grinding, complete distrust of Silicon Valley going on. When all this stuff was new and interesting, you did a Google search to find stuff. Sometimes, by law of probability, that stuff was indeed something you wanted to buy. Now, all queries are subject to change so they can put a product that paid them for exposure in front of you, completely irrespective to if that product is relevant to your search or will solve a problem for you. Social media feeds used to be a chronological timeline of things your friends posted; now they are a selection, made by an algorithm you cannot interrogate, of the "most interesting" (judged on metrics you do not set and have no control over) things your friends have posted. Some of them today, some six weeks ago. And, between nearly all of them... is a product that paid for exposure, that is probably at least tangentially related to things you're interested in, but could not be, and more importantly, was not requested. And, if you make the terrible, awful mistake of browsing any of these sites without an account, prepare for an absolute FIREHOSE of the worst, crummiest, most exploitative, total and complete bottom-of-the-barrel content, the widest possible net designed to ensnare anyone who passes by to watch a marketing grad in his 30's give 500 people in the developing world dental care, or whatever the fuck, set to copyright free music with as many ad placements as they can stuff into the thing. Increasingly the Internet is not for us, it is certainly not by us, it is simply where you go when you are bored, the only remaining third place that people reliably have access to, and in true free market fashion, it is wall-to-wall exploitation. People selling their bodies because they can't get access to enough money to live, people desperately trying to sell things they've made because time cannot be utilized anymore without a financial benefit if you want to remain solvent, and of course, massive corporations posting billboards large enough to cover the sky, in every direction, every place. A new spot springs up, a new gathering spot that promises to be better, and it gains traction because everyone is so sick of the rest of it, and then in short order once enough people frequent it, the ads go up, the beggars appear, your friends are hidden behind a cylinder of recommended bullshit that surrounds you, and it joins the cavalcade of endless irrelevant nonsense that makes up the spaces you fled, just in time for the next one to pop up nextdoor promising it won't do the same. God I am sick of the Internet. Also apologies for the tangent.
noqc 3y ago
>AI will likely finish the job The SEO attack surface is functionally infinite for AI, and I'm not sure how any search engine is supposed to be good and also have revenue. The only way to make money is to get people to give it to you, and it's hard to imagine a world in which either a) people will pay for the right to use a search engine or b) companies will pay you to rank them fairly.
wslh 3y ago
> Everyone knows Google has been swirling the tank for over a decade for actual web search and AI will likely finish the job I think that's their hypothesis either. I don't think it is a coincidence that we are seeing more lines of ads in search results than ever. They are squeezing the cash cow. I don't think this observation is subjective but could depend on your location, do you observe the same?
cma 3y ago
+ was simply replace with "". A very minor syntax change. The other stuff about wildly assuming you meant some unrelated, usually commercial, stuff though I agree with.
stainablesteel 3y ago
i see this as a failure of the marketing machine worrying too much about what people think rather than how to make money

mahkoh 3y ago

>Everyone knows Google has been swirling the tank for over a decade for actual web search and AI will likely finish the job. Everyone knows this? GOOG stock is near an all time high with search being more than 50% of its revenue.

dubcanada 3y ago
A few things. 1. GOOGL is the voting share stock ticker, not GOOG. GOOG is nothing more than class c shares. 2. Search as a line item is more than 50%, but search is not searching, searching itself provides not much value, ads are where Google makes its money. 3. A stock being near all time high has no indication that it's a company that is "swirling the tank". Often a stock does not decrease until after a series of bad earnings/negative outlook. But with that said, there is no evidence at the moment that Google is not doing great.
billjings 3y ago
This discussion is partly about how Google alters search results to increase revenue. It would stand to reason that they might also improve their stock price and search revenue by doing this, while also degrading search quality. As for why their market share has not degraded as a result, it is likely that the folks currently prosecuting Google for antitrust violations have the best argument for why this might be so.
mrtksn 3y ago
The stock price is a number representing the recent bets on its future price. It really doesn’t tell much more than that.
philistine 3y ago
A stock price does not mean that everything the company is doing is perfect. It can reasonably mean « their search is getting worse but they’ve found very good ways to make more money from worse search so I’m very happy and will buy more stock».

failbuffer 3y ago

I remember when you could query Google for x and it would simply say it didn't have any results for x. It was such a great feeling to get a frank, honest reply instead of being bullshitted with results that didn't have x in then.

mynameishere 3y ago
My favorite is when you fight and fight and fight, looking for something and then you finally manage to narrow the results down to what you wanted, and it says (right above the correct result): "It looks like there aren't many great matches for your search" Good job, Goog! I remember when it was new, and one of the killer features was the dead-simple "innovation" of having AND searches instead of OR. To this day, I think that any search engine that queried based upon the exact provided search terms would eat their lunch. Probably not, but I would like it.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Google search is optimized to deliver more ads. Providing the result you want quickly is against this.
- pixl97 3y ago
  I'm not sure how the search engine you suggest would filter out noise. There is just an ocean of generated content that exists out there filled with just about every string you could imagine that attempts to get you to click on a link so they can show an ad. The modern internet is full of hot garbage.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - mindslight 3y ago
    Any page with ads, remove it from the results. I'm not saying this would in any way be in Google's interest, but I'd love to see a search engine that did this.

ToucanLoucan 3y ago

> The main vector I look at is how much control does the user have over the results they see? This has been the trend in so much technology and I think that's why there's such a slow, grinding, complete distrust of Silicon Valley going on. When all this stuff was new and interesting, you did a Google search to find stuff. Sometimes, by law of probability, that stuff was indeed something you wanted to buy. Now, all queries are subject to change so they can put a product that paid them for exposure in front of you, completely irrespective to if that product is relevant to your search or will solve a problem for you. Social media feeds used to be a chronological timeline of things your friends posted; now they are a selection, made by an algorithm you cannot interrogate, of the "most interesting" (judged on metrics you do not set and have no control over) things your friends have posted. Some of them today, some six weeks ago. And, between nearly all of them... is a product that paid for exposure, that is probably at least tangentially related to things you're interested in, but could not be, and more importantly, was not requested. And, if you make the terrible, awful mistake of browsing any of these sites without an account, prepare for an absolute FIREHOSE of the worst, crummiest, most exploitative, total and complete bottom-of-the-barrel content, the widest possible net designed to ensnare anyone who passes by to watch a marketing grad in his 30's give 500 people in the developing world dental care, or whatever the fuck, set to copyright free music with as many ad placements as they can stuff into the thing. Increasingly the Internet is not for us, it is certainly not by us, it is simply where you go when you are bored, the only remaining third place that people reliably have access to, and in true free market fashion, it is wall-to-wall exploitation. People selling their bodies because they can't get access to enough money to live, people desperately trying to sell things they've made because time cannot be utilized anymore without a financial benefit if you want to remain solvent, and of course, massive corporations posting billboards large enough to cover the sky, in every direction, every place. A new spot springs up, a new gathering spot that promises to be better, and it gains traction because everyone is so sick of the rest of it, and then in short order once enough people frequent it, the ads go up, the beggars appear, your friends are hidden behind a cylinder of recommended bullshit that surrounds you, and it joins the cavalcade of endless irrelevant nonsense that makes up the spaces you fled, just in time for the next one to pop up nextdoor promising it won't do the same. God I am sick of the Internet. Also apologies for the tangent.

noqc 3y ago

>AI will likely finish the job The SEO attack surface is functionally infinite for AI, and I'm not sure how any search engine is supposed to be good and also have revenue. The only way to make money is to get people to give it to you, and it's hard to imagine a world in which either a) people will pay for the right to use a search engine or b) companies will pay you to rank them fairly.

wslh 3y ago

> Everyone knows Google has been swirling the tank for over a decade for actual web search and AI will likely finish the job I think that's their hypothesis either. I don't think it is a coincidence that we are seeing more lines of ads in search results than ever. They are squeezing the cash cow. I don't think this observation is subjective but could depend on your location, do you observe the same?

cma 3y ago

+ was simply replace with "". A very minor syntax change. The other stuff about wildly assuming you meant some unrelated, usually commercial, stuff though I agree with.

stainablesteel 3y ago

i see this as a failure of the marketing machine worrying too much about what people think rather than how to make money