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It's mostly summarising the same points everyone else says about Google's search quality, but they're points worth remembering nonetheless. Google's relentless

by CM30 2y ago

It's mostly summarising the same points everyone else says about Google's search quality, but they're points worth remembering nonetheless. Google's relentless drive to get ad clicks, bring traffic to their products at the expense of other sites and SEO having seemingly defeated any means to stop it has led to a dire situation in search, with zero interest in actually fixing it. Honestly, the fact they're so unwilling to drop the axe on large sites scamming them probably had the biggest effect here. If the likes of Forbes saw their whole domain get blacklisted, we'd see a lot less scammy bullshit end up on page 1. But Google don't want to do that, for various reasons.

neilv 2y ago
Given that, and I mean this as a curious question, about how situations like this could be avoided or navigated out of... Let's say you had a Mission to "Organize the world's information, and make it universally accessible and useful". Let's also say you had a Prime Directive of "Don't Be Evil". To help implement those, for anyone who won't get aligned, let's say you operate a colorful company shuttle bus, which can remove them from campus, in a one-way trip. Wouldn't this solve a whole lot of problems, and narrow the solution space for a lot of other problems?
- akira2501 2y ago
  Libraries are possible because they're discriminating. You can't catalog and organize _everything_. This is the flaw in the Google model. It was easier to ignore when very little of the "world's information" actually existed on the internet. Now that even a tiny additional fraction of that information, along with the obvious desire to manipulate and control some of it, has arrived this model completely falls apart. It was doomed from the start, and there was never any connection between organization information, and actually solving real world problems. No surprise the world is in worse shape than it was before and Google has a bunch of money it has no idea how to actually spend on the core problem.
  - b112 2y ago
    It can be fixed, and "Google" referenced as "a whole lot of intelligent people" could fix it. Easily. They just don't have any massive advantage to do so. Their goal has ways always been capture. Keep us on their portal. Well they're succeeding, because they fill pages of response with their own data, and the alternative is to click poor results. They have a vested interest to keep you on their page. It doesn't matter that their buffonerific answers are often gibberish, and so many times very wrong. Or worse subtly wrong. Those answers keep 99.9% of the people on Google only. And just take another look, too. How many of the responses aren't just their horrid AI junk, but many of the rest are youtube. Why spend time fixing main search, when it being broken pushes people to stay on google.com, or go to youtube? They can fix it, they just don't want to.
    - akira2501 2y ago
      The "world's information" includes things as banal as "what did everyone have for breakfast yesterday?" And "what about the day before?" There is simply _too much_ information. You cannot economically approach this problem. It doesn't matter how clever your staff is. What you're describing is the fact that the _stated objective_ and the _profitable outcomes_ are two different things. We've all known that since they originally printed it.
      - b112 2y ago
        This isn't the issue were discussing. The amount of data is not a relevant issue currently. The issue is the inclusion and ranking of easily discernable junk. Google has stopped caring, for my cited reasons, and can tackle this if they want. There is nothing preventing this other than it actually helping them by making their products preferable. For example, eliminating any page with referral links. Eliminating copycats. No, it's not an issue for them. This alone would get rid of 1/2 the junk. But that would reduce their silo. And further? It would mean that other search engines which buy Google search results would benefit too! Far better to show their picks on their first page results, whist keeping lower quality answers in their general search results. They can show competition exists, without really helping that competition, and people stay siloed.
- RiverCrochet 2y ago
  Your premise is incomplete. There is also "Maximize shareholder return."
- trod123 2y ago
  It would depend on your definition of evil. For some people that definition is very opaque and spiritual. For others its pretty objective, and comes down to whether the use is predicated on the corporate entity being a person, or the entity committing an act. A fairly common definition of evil is any act that doesn't result in the beneficial and long-term growth of self and others, and as an adjective with regards to people who show a willful blindness towards the consequences of their evil acts (often occurring as a result of many self-violations). I don't see how what you say would solve or narrow the solution space here given those definitions as they are outcome based. There are many things with regards to know-how and knowledge that involve knowing both what to do, and what not to do, and you can only really tell if it resulted in destruction or loss after the fact. Algorithmically to strictly not be evil is to only provide harmless information; but that in itself also leads to maladaptation and development issues which themselves are outcomes where you are evil. Obeying such a directive would require direct human action on almost everything, and providing just enough information to meet that narrow sliver of beneficial growth but even then you can still mistakenly incur a debt leading you towards the side of the scale of being evil (since we are not omnipotent). All in-actions are themselves actions as well.
tmpz22 2y ago
It's hard to request for Google to be a strong enforcer while also investigating them for monopoly. While there is precedent for companies like Google, Microsoft, and Cloudflare, to have strong compliance with for example international sanctions, having a Search Engine cripple major publications regularly would be an escalation in my view.
- Zamiel_Snawley 2y ago
  The only reason they can get away with enshitifying is because they are a monopoly.

by CM30 2y ago

neilv 2y ago

Given that, and I mean this as a curious question, about how situations like this could be avoided or navigated out of... Let's say you had a Mission to "Organize the world's information, and make it universally accessible and useful". Let's also say you had a Prime Directive of "Don't Be Evil". To help implement those, for anyone who won't get aligned, let's say you operate a colorful company shuttle bus, which can remove them from campus, in a one-way trip. Wouldn't this solve a whole lot of problems, and narrow the solution space for a lot of other problems?

akira2501 2y ago
Libraries are possible because they're discriminating. You can't catalog and organize _everything_. This is the flaw in the Google model. It was easier to ignore when very little of the "world's information" actually existed on the internet. Now that even a tiny additional fraction of that information, along with the obvious desire to manipulate and control some of it, has arrived this model completely falls apart. It was doomed from the start, and there was never any connection between organization information, and actually solving real world problems. No surprise the world is in worse shape than it was before and Google has a bunch of money it has no idea how to actually spend on the core problem.
- b112 2y ago
  It can be fixed, and "Google" referenced as "a whole lot of intelligent people" could fix it. Easily. They just don't have any massive advantage to do so. Their goal has ways always been capture. Keep us on their portal. Well they're succeeding, because they fill pages of response with their own data, and the alternative is to click poor results. They have a vested interest to keep you on their page. It doesn't matter that their buffonerific answers are often gibberish, and so many times very wrong. Or worse subtly wrong. Those answers keep 99.9% of the people on Google only. And just take another look, too. How many of the responses aren't just their horrid AI junk, but many of the rest are youtube. Why spend time fixing main search, when it being broken pushes people to stay on google.com, or go to youtube? They can fix it, they just don't want to.
  - akira2501 2y ago
    The "world's information" includes things as banal as "what did everyone have for breakfast yesterday?" And "what about the day before?" There is simply _too much_ information. You cannot economically approach this problem. It doesn't matter how clever your staff is. What you're describing is the fact that the _stated objective_ and the _profitable outcomes_ are two different things. We've all known that since they originally printed it.
    - b112 2y ago
      This isn't the issue were discussing. The amount of data is not a relevant issue currently. The issue is the inclusion and ranking of easily discernable junk. Google has stopped caring, for my cited reasons, and can tackle this if they want. There is nothing preventing this other than it actually helping them by making their products preferable. For example, eliminating any page with referral links. Eliminating copycats. No, it's not an issue for them. This alone would get rid of 1/2 the junk. But that would reduce their silo. And further? It would mean that other search engines which buy Google search results would benefit too! Far better to show their picks on their first page results, whist keeping lower quality answers in their general search results. They can show competition exists, without really helping that competition, and people stay siloed.
RiverCrochet 2y ago
Your premise is incomplete. There is also "Maximize shareholder return."
trod123 2y ago
It would depend on your definition of evil. For some people that definition is very opaque and spiritual. For others its pretty objective, and comes down to whether the use is predicated on the corporate entity being a person, or the entity committing an act. A fairly common definition of evil is any act that doesn't result in the beneficial and long-term growth of self and others, and as an adjective with regards to people who show a willful blindness towards the consequences of their evil acts (often occurring as a result of many self-violations). I don't see how what you say would solve or narrow the solution space here given those definitions as they are outcome based. There are many things with regards to know-how and knowledge that involve knowing both what to do, and what not to do, and you can only really tell if it resulted in destruction or loss after the fact. Algorithmically to strictly not be evil is to only provide harmless information; but that in itself also leads to maladaptation and development issues which themselves are outcomes where you are evil. Obeying such a directive would require direct human action on almost everything, and providing just enough information to meet that narrow sliver of beneficial growth but even then you can still mistakenly incur a debt leading you towards the side of the scale of being evil (since we are not omnipotent). All in-actions are themselves actions as well.

tmpz22 2y ago

It's hard to request for Google to be a strong enforcer while also investigating them for monopoly. While there is precedent for companies like Google, Microsoft, and Cloudflare, to have strong compliance with for example international sanctions, having a Search Engine cripple major publications regularly would be an escalation in my view.

Zamiel_Snawley 2y ago
The only reason they can get away with enshitifying is because they are a monopoly.