The Year the Internet Thought I Was MacKenzie Bezos | Hacker News Reader

The Year the Internet Thought I Was MacKenzie Bezos

wired.com

65 pointsmirciulica27 comments

The snippets feature has always seemed somewhat shady to me -- in essence, it steals pageviews from the websites that did the hard work of sourcing the information.

From my (probably naive) point of view this does seem like a useful feature for users. If you can get an accurate answer for your query without clicking on a link or having to grep the linked page for the answer that's a win in my book and a time save for users. I guess an issue arises when the snippet is _not_ correct. But in my personal experience, the snippets are usually pretty helpful/accurate

Snippets are indeed a useful feature to have, but Google should share some of the ad revenue it generates with the publishers of the featured content snippets.

The tricky thing about search AdWords, different from AdSense, is that for search AdWords, ad revenue comes in when the search results are bad.

Snippets generate revenue due to brand loyalty in the from of future searches.

They do indeed generate revenue for the publishers, because a fraction of the users actually click through into the article. Without the snippet promoting it, the article would see much fewer traffic from Google.

The snippet is almost always generated from the first search result, which garners the lion’s share of the clicks. Now, many find what they were looking for in the snippet and forego the click.

This is where regulation needs to happen. It makes no sense for a website or a group of websites to pick a fight with google over this, but a union or a government entity needs to step in and make sure google pays for this. They should set 5% of their ad revenue to pay publishers for snippets.

Google's mission is to organize all of the world's information (and then find a way to charge rent)

The fact that Google doesn’t immediately change bad data for queries is extremely scary to me. Misinformation from a query should be a civil offense, similar to libel or slander. They are effectively causing disruption in lives these days and I’m perfectly okay with Google being sued directly for spreading misinformation. If their algorithm doesn’t work, it shouldn’t be a public, they can’t just say “nope sorry that’s just how it works”.

The information in the snippet was correct.

OP’s point stands though, you can search “google snippet fail” for all kinds of misinformation this feature spreads, from harmless but funny mistakes, to conspiracy theories, to dangerous/unsafe advice.

> “In situations where people are searching for something like a phone number that is not readily available online, our systems are understanding these pages (that include those exact keywords plus a phone number) to be the best matches available, even if the phone number is not the correct number for that entity,” Lara Levin, a spokesperson for Google, said in an email.

This is completely depressing. I would really like to know what thought process led to something like this being implemented. Why would anyone even think that attaching a wrong phone number and email to anyone and broadcasting that on the top of Google Search is a wise idea?

The thought process probably was 'if people just want to find the number for X, we should show it on the search page'... The problem being that some phone numbers aren't readily available, but people still want them.

It would seem like something they could figure out, but I'm guessing there's a lot of 'contact us' pages that have the phone number and rank well for the keyword, but don't have the keyword near the phone number.

They should probably have a 'this isn't correct' link in the snippet or something to trigger review of it, but Google is alergic to humans in the loop.

An equally disturbing part about the article to me is the number of people who are willing to email a perfect stranger to beg for money or try to start a romantic relationship.

You could list the contact info on a different page and just link to it "to contact this author, click here"

Yeah, sounds like that would work. Wired definitely should do that for her.

The implementation of this google search feature also seems to be astonishingly stupid.

That's one way. Each writer seems to have a dedicated profile page anyway at wired.com/author/first-last.

I understand that the search term “mackenzie bezos phone number” is an example of a semantic search, but the search result pictured clearly states that the contact info belongs to the journalist in question. The issue is not solely in Google’s hands, then, and they seem to actually be at a juncture where the problem they would have to solve might be a wicked one. Why is it not the fault of the people who mindlessly reach out to the journalist? Why is it not Wired’s fault? Why don’t professionals have some tools in place to screen incoming comms? The article is interesting and it could have added more depth to the problem by further exploring some of those contributing factors.

Or just move it a few more sentences away from MacKenzies name, or possibly add some more HTML tag gunk to separate it, or out then author's name near the phone number.

Last year I had the opportunity to work with some Xooglers. According to their CVs an Linkedin they were with Google for a year or two. All with job titles that trim down to project managers. All very junior.

Still, considering that Google only hires the best of the best I expected to work with ambitious, clever people.

They were the worst. The showed me graphs, fancy presentations and project plans in some saas tools (lots of them).

I soon realized that they did not have a clue what they were doing. Neither could they answer ”who does what when" nor even show defined measurable goals for the projects they were managing. And they were not able to make any decisions at all.

If they are an example of Googles middle (project) management it's quite clear why Google does not progress anymore in 2020 and lots of their products rot away on an at best mediocre level.

In my point of view Google needs a major crisis (like Microsoft under the late Balmer) before it becomes the innovationleader again - which it once has been.

I'm not entirely certain that your anecdata about ex-Google project managers (who only lasted a year there) has much bearing on this article.

It's anecdotal. The question behind it is: "How does such obvious broken features like ’featured snippets for phone number searches' make it into production?"

Obviously there are working lots of very clever people at Google, so why is Google putting out so much subpar products and features?

Weak middle management is my explanation, there might be others.

Junior project managers aren’t “middle management”, they’re probably not people managers at all.

weak project management then.

Saying “the late Balmer” suggests he died. He is still alive.

Ok, the late Balmer period.

Balmer period/Balmer era

This is why it's a red flag to have been with a company for "a year or two" before moving on. Did you call Google HR and ask if they're eligible for rehire?

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