Mark ScourseJun 11, 2023
James Gleick

An astonishing fact about the present moment in technology:

Google—which began by doing one thing, and did it better than anyone else, and used that one thing to become a giant company, richer and more powerful than almost any other entity on earth—has lost its ability to do that one thing.

#Google https://hachyderm.io/@confluency/110491848831123193

Adrianna Pińska (@[email protected])

Content farms have basically eaten the first two to three pages of a typical Google search. This morning I was trying to find information about the relative safety of different space heater designs, and 95% of the results were long, rambly bullshit posts written by Jim Smith the Extremely Real Engineer Man for AllAboutSpaceHeaters.com and filled with Amazon affiliate links. Wow, AI is going great. I can't wait to see how this amazing technology will help humanity next.

Hachyderm.io
Jun 10, 2023 at 7:40pmWeb
Show threadTony WellsJun 10, 2023

@JamesGleick

I've increasingly found that a lot of searches seem to bring back less relevant results than they used to, but a search that's for a product brings back utter garbage, and if I'm searching for a product review, it's even worse. There's massive content duplication too.

Show threadMax WainwrightJun 10, 2023
@JamesGleick duckduckgoers unite
Show threadMKSinSAJun 11, 2023

Amen, @maxwainwright I've made the switch and am pleased with the results.

@JamesGleick

Show threadMax WainwrightJun 12, 2023
today I noticed that - (NOT) doesn't work. I guess they broke it on purpose? Got lots of results with this $string in the title even though I had -$string in the query :-(
Show threadCautionWIP 🎃+🇨🇦+🏳️‍🌈= Jun 12, 2023

@maxwainwright @JamesGleick DuckDuckGo is pushing AI as well, though at least they’re using Wikipedia as their content source.

I’m still using it as my default, but the intermittent outages are concerning and irritating.

This is what I get when I do search for it via my safari browser. 🤣🤷🏽

Show threadNicole ParsonsJun 10, 2023

@JamesGleick

Google is at the "watering down the chowder" phase of Cory Doctorow's enshittification business model.
https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
"I know of a restaurant that served a fantastic clam chowder and was packed with customers every day at lunchtime. Then the business was sold, and the new owner focused on golden eggs—he decided to water down the chowder.

For about a month, with costs down and revenues constant, profits zoomed. But little by little, the customers began to disappear.
1/2

Show threadNicole ParsonsJun 10, 2023

2/2
.... Trust was gone, and business dwindled to almost nothing. The new owner tried desperately to reclaim it, but he had neglected the customers, violated their trust, and lost the asset of customer loyalty. There was no more goose to produce the golden egg."

7 Habits of Effective People
Stephen Covey

Google engaging in reputational self-harm at the behest of their investor's political agenda

Surveillance capitalism
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/07/heres-a-look-at-who.html

https://observer.com/2023/06/google-saudi-arabia-data-center-protest/

https://english.alarabiya.net/News/saudi-arabia/2023/04/14/Saudi-Arabia-s-Crown-Prince-launches-four-new-economic-zones-with-special-benefits

The Saudi Crown Prince hung out this week with Google execs Sergey Brin and Sundar Pichai

The Saudi Crown Prince came to Silicon Valley this week and met with a handful of executives, including co-founder Sergey Brin

CNBC
Show threadGreg SpradlinJun 11, 2023
@Npars01 Google “bonesaw”, Sergei.
Show threadNicole ParsonsJun 11, 2023

@spradlig

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-06/google-thiel-stand-out-in-saudi-prince-s-silicon-valley-tour

https://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-arabia-crown-prince-visits-apple-google-2018-4

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/14/business/media/reality-saudi-prince-media-narrative.html

https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/10/will-mbss-money-ever-become-radioactive/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAHw6j_vWAEw5r4GXV-IyV7_T6aGFZTvBlcuO7IBcGZZI3yXCRzK2yqn1N1IOWiRiISjGPqqnRldV77BsIDUk2-x8-TeP5hLSDNDyeO1M9BfYZ37tPesLvRu0a53cOuhXlluCO7R7kL787Uz28YlX_hGasM1evsZ1sSSZPEuNC4qO

Were the Saudis involved in efforts to create a financial crisis?
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/10/i-wouldnt-take-that-money-saudi-arabias-dirty-investments-could-be-trouble-for-softbank

Google, Thiel Feature in Saudi Prince's Silicon Valley Tour

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wrapped up a whirlwind tour of technology titans on Friday, part of a three-week U.S. visit focused on economic opportunities to diversify the oil-rich nation.

Bloomberg.com
Show threadPeterD 🇩🇪 🇨🇦Jun 10, 2023
@JamesGleick
YUP!
Show threadThe Thankless Water HeaterJun 10, 2023
@JamesGleick If you do a search on DuckDuckGo or Bing you’ll get roughly the results Google used to return. I don’t think Google is being tricked into promoting shit content from content farms. Google is being paid to promote shit content from content farms, and it’s very profitable for them.
Show threadAndrew (ku7)Jun 11, 2023

@ThanklessWaterHeater @JamesGleick I think you will find that's very product specific.

Anything technical or research google is still superior, but I am using ChatGPT first a lot now as it gets me closer to the target before going for the search engine.

Show threadThe Thankless Water HeaterJun 11, 2023
@ku7 @JamesGleick Yes, research is not a commercial venture, so it’s largely unaffected. But anywhere there’s stuff to be sold, Google, like Amazon, is using its monopoly position to squeeze money out of sellers in exchange for boosting those sellers’ listings, no matter what it does to the usefulness of the results the user sees. I find for my purposes DuckDuckGo is far superior now, in that it’s just like Google was six or seven years ago.
Show threadJDSJun 11, 2023
@JamesGleick fully agree, been saying this for years. It’s the entire internet.
Show threadGeoff WinklessJun 11, 2023

@JamesGleick Google never did search the best: Altavista was far better.

Google had tech bros telling us that they were the Good Guys, and then Compaq (av's owner) decided inexplicably that they should try to compete with yahoo (who were their main customer for AltaVista search) in web portal, which was a market that was already failing. With the exit of AltaVista from the market, Google never bothered to improve their search, they instead spent their r&d finding ways to monetise what they had.

Show threadResunaJun 11, 2023
@JamesGleick This started when they broke search on their Usenet archive. I was astonished. Search was their core competence and they broke it completely. Not from spammers flooding the first few pages of results with scams, but stuff I knew was there and had previously pulled up just not being there at all.
Show threadLotus BlossomJun 13, 2023
@JamesGleick And Google's YouTube search function is just so awful. Completely useless!