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"I think, as noted in the article, that it seems Google sometimes uses names from advertisements as if they are canonical."

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"Currently the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising... We expect that commercial search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers..." - Sergey Brin and Larry Page, 1998

http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

"...or live long enough to see yourself become the villain."

Nice link. It is incredibly interesting that the Google founders were so outspoken against advertising.

I’d love a detailed account of the process which derailed these moral ideals. Anyone?

> I’d love a detailed account of the process which derailed these moral ideals. Anyone?

It's relatively easy and fits into what Google has been doing: they want advertising to fit the (current) needs of the consumer, and the better the fit, the more money they can command for ad slots - compared to the "old guard" which simply firehosed advertising around without any kind of conversion tracking or effectiveness.

For example, when I'm in Munich and searching for a haircut and I get ads for a haircutter in Berlin, that ad money is wasted for the advertiser, and I as a customer lose one potential spot for a Munich based haircutter. When Google now shows me an ad for a Munich haircutter, or even better, one that is less than 5min of walking away, then both the haircutter benefits (from my haircut) and I benefit (for not having to walk more than I need to).

Or, to expand on this example, metadata like opening hours - advertising for a store that is closed is wasted money when I need an open store.

All that acquisition of ever more data is what drives Google: the more data they possess, the more fine they can tailor your advertising, and thus be geared towards both advertisers and users at the same time. After all, if the ads aren't effective, the advertisers will pack up shop and leave, and the users will be frustrated because they don't get what they need.

The progression makes sense.

1. Let's make a better search engine. 2. Let's put ads on our search engine. 3. Let's create our own ad network so that we can control what ads look like, so they're unobtrusive. 4. People like our ads, let's put them on other people's pages. 5. People want more interesting ads, let's expand out. 6. Our business relies on ads, we need to collect more user data so we can focus ads even better than our competitors.

By doing advertising 'better' they could make a better product. Unfortunately, they went down the exact same path that other advertisers did: getting more invasive and more aggressive and less user-centric. I hate slippery slope arguments, but this seems to apply in retrospect.

Alright. So it was just a flat out mistake to think morality was considered even in the slightest.

<sings>

For the love of money

People will steal from their mother

For the love of money

People will rob their own brother

For the love of money

People can't even walk the street

Because they never know who in the world they're gonna beat

For that lean, mean, mean green

-- For The Love Of Money, O'Jays

Most of the steps down this slippery slope were likely to the end of providing a better service. that is why it is insidious, you don't need to act "the love of money" to end up serving "the love of money"

They later acknowledged that ads could give better experience. Their earlier beliefs in the beginning were probably based on the ads at that time. 1 search engine didn't distinguish bw search results and ads, leading to bad user experience. Clearly, Google eliminated this.

I particularly love this section:

> Since it is very difficult even for experts to evaluate search engines, search engine bias is particularly insidious. A good example was OpenText, which was reported to be selling companies the right to be listed at the top of the search results for particular queries [Marchiori 97]. This type of bias is much more insidious than advertising, because it is not clear who "deserves" to be there, and who is willing to pay money to be listed. This business model resulted in an uproar, and OpenText has ceased to be a viable search engine.

> But less blatant bias are likely to be tolerated by the market. For example, a search engine could add a small factor to search results from "friendly" companies, and subtract a factor from results from competitors. This type of bias is very difficult to detect but could still have a significant effect on the market. Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results. For example, we noticed a major search engine would not return a large airline's homepage when the airline's name was given as a query. It so happened that the airline had placed an expensive ad, linked to the query that was its name. A better search engine would not have required this ad, and possibly resulted in the loss of the revenue from the airline to the search engine.

> In general, it could be argued from the consumer point of view that the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want. This of course erodes the advertising supported business model of the existing search engines. However, there will always be money from advertisers who want a customer to switch products, or have something that is genuinely new. But we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm.

"For example, we noticed a major search engine would not return a large airline's homepage when the airline's name was given as a query. It so happened that the airline had placed an expensive ad, linked to the query that was its name. A better search engine would not have required this ad, and possibly resulted in the loss of the revenue from the airline to the search engine."

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If you go and search "Delta" today on Google, the top result is an advertisement for Delta that points to delta.com.

This is because delta doesn’t want southwest’s ad to show up when people search for delta

San Francisco also puts out an official map, but like many other official maps, it lacks many of the neighborhoods people expect to find: Sunnyside, Japantown, the Tenderloin, Dogpatch, Hunters Point, Mission Bay, Hayes Valley, Miraloma, Cow Hollow... and so in order to give users what they want and expect, Google has to gather data from other sources.

http://sfplanninggis.org/NeighborhoodOrganizations/

What a lovely map. Glen Park BART isn't even in Glen Park in that map.

Yeah, according to the city, it's in the Outer Mission, directly north [sic] of Bernal Heights.

I like this also:

https://i.redd.it/domryaykbdn01.jpg

https://www.reddit.com/r/etymologymaps/comments/86eef7/san_f...

What makes the maps that the city makes up better than the ones that the real estate agents make up? If people are using the latter to determine where to live, doesn't that define a neighborhood?

City council determines the areas within a city; it is NOT made up. Some areas are much more popular than others. Leaving this to random people is absurd. The areas don't suddenly change.

Anyway, this is how it is like in The Netherlands.

So the maps made by the city council are superior because they're a better reflection of how popular an area is?

No. Because they are a result of democracy.

The free market has democratic power the government lacks.

No. It defines advertising.

Neighborhoods imply far more than geography; things like culture, traditions, cooperation, people define a neighborhood. This is, among other things, the contents of trust. The idea of a foundation on which to make a happy life amongst they neighbors can involve many different things, so it’s vague, but the most important part is that the participants themselves are who develops the neighborhood; not capitalists trying to profit from it.

Gentrification is a prime example of where this becomes a cruel and unusual form of manipulation, but it’s not the only one.

What Google is doing should absolutely be considered a crime.

What makes the maps that the city makes up better than the ones that the real estate agents make up?

In this case, the city designations are important because each year the city divides a pot of money that goes to supplemental infrastructure improvements in each neighborhood.

Because it's supplemental money, it is a fixed amount for each neighborhood. If a neighborhood's boundaries increase, then money available for improvements in that neighborhood is stretched thinner. If a neighborhood's boundaries shrink, then more money is available for improvements per block.

This is why boundaries matter, and why they are codified.

That's a good reason for why the city shouldn't arbitrarily change its official definitions of neighborhood boundaries without also changing budget allocations.

Why shouldn't everyone else define neighborhoods however they feel is most useful to them?

Who else should make that decision?

Agents will arbitrarily change maps basted on what their current listing are and would happily change them daily. Longer term there is little point changing place names as changing demographics will eventually adjust the meaning of these names even if no lines move on a map.

Nobody/Everybody, if people start calling a region by a name it makes sense to record the usage and put it on the map. Sure, it probably makes perfections and planners twitch but it makes maps more useful.

I notice a lot of Americans love referring to Canada as “Canadia”. I can’t make a bit of sense out of it, but by your logic we should update the maps already.

That's how we do it for Japan and Germany.

I'd live with that plan, so long as the people with personal profit motives don't automatically end up with way more voice that local residents.

Why shouldn't everyone else pronounce and spell things however they feel is nicest?

Because chaos.

People already do that and it works fine.

For some things.

Your compiler isn't going to care about your opinion of the prettiest way to spell "print". Your lawyer is going to have strong opinions about how you spell you name and address on the contract you're about to sign.

Sure, if you're writing poetry, you get to choose everything. If you need what you write to be as close to unambiguously understood as possible to other people (or machines) - then you need to follow the norms and common uses of words, and spell them and use grammar that other people agree on.

(Neighborhood names might well be closer to "poetry" than "reserved words in a computer language", but if we then become beholden to commission-driven real estate agents to define our local nomenclature from a purely personal profit seeking motivation - I think I'd rather have some anonymous city bureaucrat responsible for drawing the lines and choosing the labels...)

In most of the USA outside of San Francisco, authoritarianism is frowned upon. In China and SF, the government is more free to tell people how to speak and live. It's a cultural difference.

My compiler doesn't allow me to make up spelling in my code, but my friends are fine with me making up alternate spelling when I text them. Not everything is computer code or legal documents.

The names that bureaucrats or real estate agents give to neighborhoods has never mattered to me. Why do you think we have to be beholden to it? My point is that you're free to call your neighborhood whatever you want. I'm sure you're capable of figuring out which name is appropriate to use depending on the context of your conversation.

I realise it could be a problem if words become unrecognised, but there's already a few spelling variations among neighbours. People are flexible. Heck, they can understand eevn wehn yuo wrte lkie tihs.

You say tomato; I say tomato.

> Heck, they can understand eevn wehn yuo wrte lkie tihs.

Not aywlas. I keep sineeg tihs, and ftnrqleeuy fnid mlesyf nidneeg to dcgrusaioe (or at lesat cllhgeane) the ptsooiin. For slaml wdros it can wrok, but I fnid tihs is iltnrheeny dcfuliift (and dnniirag, as wlel as fttrrnsaiug!) to raed, and dns'eot slace to let you raed in a ceorneht fhisoan oevr a ranblaosee poierd wtih mtlui-sllibyac wrods.

Iiagnme a cueopmtr sncciee or poolsghcyy txet dylpaeisd or ogzeriand tihs way. It wulod be ulllnntiigbee, or at the vrey bset a sptmbuioal mhoted of trrrnfnseiag lraeg qnttaiiues of dlteeiad itfrimaoonn atalccurey.

Butifyou'regoingtomessupwordsandclaimreadability,whynottakeoutspacesandseehowyoumightfare?

Orsrmcablewrdosinsteeenncswhoitutseacps,too?

Hope there aren't any spelling mistakes, I tried to ensure everything was correct before I messed with it. I spent way too long on this, and since I've tried to check everything out I need a break. It was still quite enjoyable to do, although I'm sure it had a negative impact on my spelling.

Descrambled:

> Not always. I keep seeing this, and frequently find myself needing to discourage (or at least challenge) the position. For small words it can work, but I find this is inherently difficult (and draining, as well as frustrating!) to read, and doesn't scale to let you read in a coherent fashion over a reasonable period with multi-syllabic words.

Imagine a computer science or psychology text displayed or organized this way. It would be unintelligible, or at the very best a suboptimal method of transferring large quantities of information accurately.

But if you're going to mess up words and claim readability, why not take out spaces and see how you might fare?

Or scramble words in sentences without spaces, too?

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Quite readable. Cant' vouch for spelling mistakes, or lack thereof :)

You've given me quite a chuckle - I'm glad someone took the time, given how long I put into it :)

But then you must admit that khsgiouyáwryýzsgdfkjhnFIUyiy3čjklj. Else you are a hypocrite.

Why shouldn’t I be able to change your username to “daveFNfuck”?

How many people will need to start calling you “daveFNfuck” before HN mods should change your username to “daveFNfuck”?

You can't change my username, but you don't have to refer to me by my official username. Furthermore, it's ok that my government ID doesn't say daveFNbuck even though I'm using it as my name here.

There are almost no situations where people refer to me by the name in my government records, and that's fine. Those records still work for their intended purpose and there's no need to update them to match my nicknames or aliases.

> You can’t change my username.

But what if they could?

The issue here isn’t that Google got the name wrong, but that they actively chose a new one and could change it to the new one because the public depends on a private entity’s map system and that private entity is able to manipulate the representation in their own private interest.

>If< I didn’t like you and I were able to change your name on every non-public record to “Fucking Idiot” (Job applications, Facebook, Twitter, GMail, etc.), maybe you wouldn’t mind that. Or maybe you would mind it and I convinced you to not mind it by explaining how it wouldn’t effect your government records. (I doubt the residents in question mind the name “The East Cut” either, but they already had one and preferred it. In many of these name changes, the effects can mean rapid mass development, raised rents and evictions, etc.) For you, this name change would mean at least a lot of explaining how this obnoxious poster on Hacker News was trying to make some disparate point but it has nothing to do with your qualification for the job, getting your account banned from Social media sites. You could start a new one but you’d lose all your posts and followers. At the end of the day, you should probably have been able to stop me, but you couldn’t.

If Google were doing something malicious that caused real and important harm, I'd probably agree with you that what they were doing was wrong. I don't see the harm here, and I don't see malice. They weren't doing this capriciously, they were doing this at the behest of a nonprofit created by the community.

Right. If nothing harmful has been reported by New York Times by now, then I’m sure nothing could ever go wrong.

I’m critiquing the shape of the system and the potential for harm. The municipal duties our ancestors fought to have managed through democratic processes we love to pride ourselves on are swiftly being surrendered to private corporations who citizens widely do not trust. And then we wait until the damage is irreversible and pretend we weren’t asking for it.

I warned you.

I don't think our ancestors fought to ensure that mapmaking could only be done through democratic processes. The usual story we like to tell ourselves about this country is that our ancestors fought to give us freedom, not to ensure that the government would have the final say on how we're allowed to identify our neighborhoods.

You say you critiqued the potential for harm and that you've warned me, but I don't believe that you've done that. You've explained how similar changes to other systems could potentially harm me, but you haven't explained how changing neighborhood names on Google maps could lead to harm.

The maps made by the city have legal impact. They control everything from funding to allocation of community resources. For example, in my city each neighborhood has an official community association that is acts as a liaison to the city.

Improvement projects are also designated by neighborhood, long term planning and resource allocation is on a per-neighborhood basis.

>> The company declined to detail how some place names came about, though some appear to have resulted from mistakes by researchers, rebrandings by real estate agents — or just outright fiction.

Every lawyer knows what is happening. Copyright 101 - you cannot copyright facts, a big deal for mapmakers. Google is pulling data from a map created by someone else. They are quiet about it because they do not want whoever owns that original map to catch wind that their work acts as source material for google maps.

Some map creators fight this by adding fictitious names, even streets, into maps. You can copyright fiction. So if your fake street name gets used in some other map you may have a case (the same game happened with phonebooks). No doubt google cross-checks source maps to detect such things. So it is no surprise that from this shady little battle we get the occasional strange name.

My work moved buildings a year ago (military facility). We have been trying to get our location changed on google maps for over a year, but are constantly refused. No matter what we say, taxis and pizza deliveries still go to the wrong place (a couple blocks away). Whatever source maps google uses obviously trump our opinions. We are debating installing a sign at the old location. Maybe google streetview will see it.

Have you tried registering with “Google My Business”? I update a local businesses address though that (when they moved location) and it was updated on the maps immediately (possibly a few days delay at most).

Who refused you? What other method did you try?

I don;t think registering a military airbase on "google my business" is appropriate. We aren't a secret location, but still aren't focused on increasing our web presence. We just want the bus and taxi companies to come to the correct place when we call them. (They never listen to the address we give them. They google us and drive to wherever google maps says.)

We tried the "report and error" and "claim this business" functions on maps. Both were rejected. I got a note from a moderator person saying the new location was a construction site, which it was three years ago. Now we are in the new building.

My previous condo address # suddenly changed to adjacent number in google 2 years ago. I edited multiple times to the correct address and my corrections were rejected every time . Even submitting a government website showing the correct address didn't work. As I had moved I didnt care anymore but a few weeks ago I got a notification that 1 of my edits was approved.

You have to wonder if this has anything to do with their Neighborly app. Maps are how we collectively tell our stories and controlling the language used in those stories affects the outcome. Remember when everyone was calling that chunk of SOMA with the shitty overpriced condos the East Cut? What ever happened to all the people that lived there after the crash?

TFA is literally about the East Cut.

The build quality here is as good as it gets for multifamily, IMO.

And this was how my definitely in the Tenderlion apartment showed up as SOMA in all searches.

>I got a particularly ridiculous one just this week saying that it's "our policy" (the real estate developer's) that maps should be drawn along a certain set of lines, and that we (the web site) are required to adhere to their policy.

My mom says you should do something....