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other big search providers (to my knowledge) didn't ban their competitors Yahoo had links to Altavista, lycos, google, etc, at the bottom of its search results

other big search providers (to my knowledge) didn't ban their competitors Yahoo had links to Altavista, lycos, google, etc, at the bottom of its search results years ago. I'm not sure where he's coming from. If the internet was a book, the text would be companies like Disney and the index would be google. It would seem strange that the author would be paid less and be held in less esteem than the guy who compiled the index.

ryanwaggoner 17y ago
Agreed. I don't really understand people's mindless adulation of Google, which is at heart an advertising company. I find Google tremendously useful and I admire them as a business, but the reality is that we've swapped one barrier to entry (publishing, tv, cable, etc) for another (Google). As the author pointed out, if you get yanked from Google, you're dead. Is this really a better situation than what we had before? Instead of power being consolidated in a handful of powerful companies, it's now consolidated into one very young and very unproven company whose sole motivation in life appears to be selling ads against other people's original content. Terrific. Of course the vanguard of the media industry doesn't like Google. They've spent billions creating content and Google's entire business model is to lower the value of that content to free so they can sell more ads against it. And we cheer Google on because we want shit for free, meanwhile complaining about how Demand Media and Aol and TechCrunch are pumping out incredible quantities of shitty content to get more ad views. The middle of media is dying, and it's partly thanks to Google. You can go niche / high quality and produce artisanal content that small groups are willing to pay for, or you can mass produce piles of shit and make pennies at scale. But I'm not sure you can produce good content for a large audience anymore. /rant To be clear, I'm not really blaming Google, or Demand or anyone. This is what the market wants, and I'm not sure it's evil to give it to them. If they hadn't done it, someone else would have. My point is just that Google isn't some altruistic genie.

ryanwaggoner 17y ago

Agreed. I don't really understand people's mindless adulation of Google, which is at heart an advertising company. I find Google tremendously useful and I admire them as a business, but the reality is that we've swapped one barrier to entry (publishing, tv, cable, etc) for another (Google). As the author pointed out, if you get yanked from Google, you're dead. Is this really a better situation than what we had before? Instead of power being consolidated in a handful of powerful companies, it's now consolidated into one very young and very unproven company whose sole motivation in life appears to be selling ads against other people's original content. Terrific. Of course the vanguard of the media industry doesn't like Google. They've spent billions creating content and Google's entire business model is to lower the value of that content to free so they can sell more ads against it. And we cheer Google on because we want shit for free, meanwhile complaining about how Demand Media and Aol and TechCrunch are pumping out incredible quantities of shitty content to get more ad views. The middle of media is dying, and it's partly thanks to Google. You can go niche / high quality and produce artisanal content that small groups are willing to pay for, or you can mass produce piles of shit and make pennies at scale. But I'm not sure you can produce good content for a large audience anymore. /rant To be clear, I'm not really blaming Google, or Demand or anyone. This is what the market wants, and I'm not sure it's evil to give it to them. If they hadn't done it, someone else would have. My point is just that Google isn't some altruistic genie.