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Comment by indigochill | Hacker News Reader

> I don't see why I would want to exclude my site from any index? Being in indexes helps people find my writing, which I like!

It's essentially a form of boycott. If one believes Google is a problematic entity (too many fingers in too many aspects of our lives), it's a way to sever connections with them at some personal cost.

At least, if you care about search traffic - one might argue the assumption that Google-like search is the default way to navigate the web is one worth reconsidering and encouraging alternatives to anyway.

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So, first, I don't think Google search is harmful, so I'm not especially interested in boycotting, but I'm happy to grant this for the discussion.

There's already an interesting question about when boycotting is it worthwhile tactic, but in this situation, there's the additional complexity of there being two ends at which one could boycott a search engine:

* Producer: don't allow the search engine to include your stuff

* Consumer: use a different search engine

This is not the only place you find this dynamic. For example, if I thought Chrome was harmful, I could choose:

* Producer: make my site incompatible with Chrome and suggest people switch

* Consumer: use a different browser

Or, with email:

* Producer: don't email people with @gmail.com addresses

* Consumer: use a different email provider

Thinking through these cases and similar ones, if you think Gmail / Chrome / Search is harmful then the "consumer" side makes sense: the alternatives are nearly as good so you're not giving up much, and you're helping increase diversity. On the other hand, the "producer" side ones are much less attractive, because they're a much larger sacrifice and the benefit doesn't seem that big.

(Disclosure: I work at Google, but not on Search, Chrome, or Gmail)

> (Disclosure: I work at Google, but not on Search, Chrome, or Gmail)

I appreciate that you mention in your bio that you do work in Ads at Google, which seems directly relevant to OP’s point about boycotting Google by blocking indexing. If Google can’t or otherwise doesn’t index your content, Google can’t profit from selling ads that it otherwise show alongside search results for it. If Google de-indexing became popular among a group of content creators, other search engines may not be similarly blocked, and other alternatives to find said content would be found or created, all to the detriment of Google Ads placement, which is a profitable - and inseparable - component of Google Search.

I don't work on that kind of ad: I work in display ads. If you go to a newspaper or other publisher and see ads alongside the content, there's a good chance that my team owns the JS that handles requesting those ads and putting the responses on the screen.

The producer side would be the much more effective option if they could get a significant fraction of people to do the same. That might not happen now, but if enough people get fed up with Google maybe it will.

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