Mastodawn

Dustin Williams Oct 3, 2023

CORRECTION: Wired have deleted this story because they got it greviously wrong. Corrections rarely have the impact of the original story but this one is categorically wrong.

"Here’s how it works. Say you search for “children’s clothing.” Google converts it, without your knowledge, to a search for “NIKOLAI-brand kidswear,” making a behind-the-scenes substitution of your actual query with a different query that just happens to generate more money for the company, and will generate results you weren’t searching for at all. It’s not possible for you to opt out of the substitution."

I suppose it's predictable but I feel like everything I've used on the Internet has just publicly turned to dirt in the last 18 months.

https://www.wired.com/story/google-antitrust-lawsuit-search-results/

A Note From WIRED Leadership

WIRED

Jay Thoden van Velzen ☁️🛡️

@neilcar it does explain why search results these days are absolute garbage unless you already know exactly what you're looking for

nyancat_rainbow

@neilcar This kind of explains the thing I found just yesterday when I tried to find one product online with the intent of purchasing it, only to find my Google search filled with sales for a somewhat similar yet entirely different product.

Lynn Grant Oct 3, 2023

@neilcar That’s much worse than the problems I have noticed. Like when I had a query that had to do with Black women modeling fashions. It gave me white women modeling black clothes. So I replaced “Black” with “African American”. It appeared that Google said “Oh, ‘African American’, that means ‘Black’,” and gave me more white women modeling black clothes.

@lynngrant Honestly, I'm not sure whether "nakedly, unethically money-grubbing" is better or worse than that.

Dennis Boone Oct 3, 2023

@neilcar Which is presumably why + and - no longer work -- if they were allowed, they might allow you to bypass the crap.

varx/tech Oct 5, 2023

@drb @neilcar The "+" hasn't worked for a while, and you have to use quotes. Except really what you usually want is Verbatim Mode, which is available in the tools.

I'm curious whether Verbatim Mode *does* bypass this. I expect it might.

Sprichst du Quack?Oct 3, 2023

@neilcar A quick boost for the search engine I've switched to: kagi.com
I have to pay a $5-10 monthly subscription, but I actually feel like the beneficiary, as opposed to advertisers or executive compensation packages.

@quaken I switched to Kagi recently as well -- I'm not sure if paying for search makes sense for everybody but I live & work on the Internet so it makes sense for me.

Matthew Miller Oct 4, 2023

@quaken @neilcar

How does it do with click-farm auto-generated results? I paid for Neeva for a while (until they shut down) and they were generally good — except this was a plague.

@mattdm @quaken I haven’t noticed it as an issue but you can test up to a certain number of queries a month for free.

Matthew Miller Oct 4, 2023

@neilcar @quaken

I'll give it a go. I've been using qwant.com, and it is fine, except for not great at 1) anything that's kinda recent and 2) "what's this obscure error message?"

@mattdm @quaken I feel like 2) is my primary search engine use case.

StarkRG Oct 4, 2023

@neilcar It's been slowly heading in that direction for the last decade.

@StarkRG With apologies to Hemmingway:

“How Did You Go [morally] bankrupt?” “Two Ways. Gradually and Then Suddenly.”

Chris [list of emoji]Oct 5, 2023

This actually explains a lot. Google's engineering is usually really good and I'd wondered how it could get this bad this fast.

@suetanvil One thing that working in corporations has taught me is that I can normally reverse-engineer your key performance indicators (KPIs) from your outcomes -- people tend to do exactly what they're being paid the most to do.

dynamic Oct 8, 2023

"Editor’s Note 10/6/2023: After careful review of the op-ed, "How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet," and relevant material provided to us following its publication, WIRED editorial leadership has determined that the story does not meet our editorial standards. It has been removed."

That's it? That's all they're going to tell us about what was wrong with the piece?

Is there somewhere we can find out more?

@dynamic In short, the writer completely misinterpreted the source material.

https://twitter.com/adamkovac/status/1710041764910846061

Adam Kovacevich (@adamkovac) on X

I asked Google PR if they could share the trial exhibit that @megangrA's Wired piece referred to (which this tweet responds to ⬇️). Here's what they shared:

X (formerly Twitter)

varx/social Oct 8, 2023

@neilcar @dynamic Wow. So the actual source material is about advertisement keyword matching. That's a pretty horribly bungled story.

varx/social Oct 8, 2023

^ Re-boosting this now-corrected link to the WIRED story about Google altering search queries.

Apparently the author misinterpreted a slide about advertisement keyword matching, and there's not actually a story here.