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And now it's become an anti-signal. If I search for a hotel the top N results are for other hotels, and then results for travel agents, and buried somewhere in
by malux85 8mo ago
And now it's become an anti-signal. If I search for a hotel the top N results are for other hotels, and then results for travel agents, and buried somewhere in this sea of uselessness is the result I searched for. The managers at Google have become self interested promotion hunters, and the programmers weak sycophants. It wasn't like this in the early days when I was there, the best ideas won, but then the B player managers were hired and the rot started.
- lanstin 8mo agoIt isn't the managers it is the business. All those geniuses hired and over years and years no one came up with another business model but ads. I pay for ad-free YouTube and would happily pay for ad free search. As would many. Many people would like a google scale micropayments system that isn't ads. The failure to do this led directly to social media becoming customer devouring experiences rather than making good products people want.
- dingnuts 8mo ago[dead]
- shinryuu 8mo agoCheck out kagi; adfree search
- yifanl 8mo agoParadoxically, the people who pay for adfree experiences would be the most valuable targets for ads, so I suspect any pay for no ads arrangement will be temporary at best.
- FireBeyond 8mo agoExactly. Next up, it'll be on the Plus tier to "help subsidize the low price of this tier".
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- newswasboring 8mo ago> All those geniuses hired and over years and years no one came up with another business model but ads This isn't true, there were many other ideas. It's just that only KPI was how much money they can make, thus ads won. Companies don't have an axis of ethics or morality.
- lanstin 8mo agoIdeas don't count - it's persuasion and execution that matter. One of the several reasons that the rule is not ruled by smartness/rationality.
- newswasboring 8mo agoI think we are talking past each other. I'm saying there are proposed models which are not ads, but they don't maximize earnings. A silicon valley company will always choose earnings over anything else.
- stevage 8mo agoI refuse to pay for ad free YouTube + otherwise I'd watch even more of it. The annoyingness of ads is a pretty important brake.
- s1mplicissimus 8mo agoThere's other options to break this kind of cognitive pattern, like https://unhook.app/ https://unhook.app/ If I want them, I can use them. No need to justify ads for this use case.
- stevage 8mo agoThat doesn't work on the TV. It also apparently requires using a specific browser (Kiwi) to work on mobile. But thanks, still useful on desktop.
- BobaFloutist 8mo agoSeems to work in Firefox on Android?
- pton_xd 8mo ago> If I search for a hotel the top N results are for other hotels, and then results for travel agents, and buried somewhere in this sea of uselessness is the result I searched for. The other day I had a DMV appointment scheduled on my Google Calendar with the office address saved in the location field. I opened the event and clicked on the address to navigate there. I didn't realize initially but the first few Google Maps results were ads! When clicking on an exact address link!! I almost ended up at some apartment complex 2 miles away. Absolutely bewildering.
- riku_iki 8mo ago> The managers at Google have become self interested promotion hunters, and the programmers weak sycophants. It wasn't like this in the early days when I was there, the best ideas won, but then the B player managers were hired and the rot started. I bet they run some metrics, and while hyper-intelligent persons like you are annoyed, there is a chance that avg joes representing 95% of revenue are fine with that.
- chairmansteve 8mo agoWhen it comes to anything tech related, the HN crowd are trend setters. And.... the world is crying out for a google alternative. If it ever appears, the tech savvy people will be the first to move, followed by everyone else.
- riku_iki 8mo agoKagi is waiting for your money
- sdf2erf 8mo agoIn the early days they werent a publicy traded company and Brin/Page did not get exposed to the taste of being ultra-wealthy. Steve Jobs looking back now is incredibly rare - someone who was wealthy but had the spirit of innovation to keep going again and again.
- Applejinx 8mo agoNever thought I would go to DuckDuckGo for searching, ever. I'd do Kagi but I don't like their use of Yandex so I'll keep an eye on whether they figure their stuff out politically. I'd pay for search but not if it's paying Russia, I've been very unhappy with what Russia does with money in recent decades.
- stevage 8mo agoI used Kagi for a year or two then switched to DDG. It's fine. I do not miss Google at all.
- jpalomaki 8mo agoKagi is using Google search behind the scenes. I think that’s why it felt so easy to switch to.
- Applejinx 8mo agoThat tracks with the 'we use everybody and curate optimal results' model they've got going on, but I wouldn't be changing the search habits of decades if I didn't mean to actively reject what Google search has turned into. So, not a good way to justify a paying-them model.
- mentalgear 8mo agoBeen using DuckDuckGo for almost 2 years now - couldn't believe it at first, but results are at least as good, if not even better than Google.