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Comment by huijzer | Hacker News Reader

> Google has historically been protective of their front page, why now?

Probably for the same reason that Google is shutting down Stadia [1] and cutting staff [2], and the same reason that we see roughly one announcement of layoffs here on Hacker News every week: most people expect that we are going into a recession. For example, see the price of major indexes like the S&P 500 or the NASDAQ and plot it on a 10+ year timescale.

What surprises me the most actually is how quickly Google can adapt to the situation. Basically, they have been giving out candy for free when there was lots of money coming and now that they expect less, they quickly put on extra income streams and cut out money losers.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33022768

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32927848

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It's not really a matter of opinion or what people think. We're already in a recession here in the United States, as we've had two negative GDP growth quarters in a row.

Anyone who says otherwise is likely just doing so for political reasons, as it's also an election year here in the United States, but to do so they'd have to literally change the definition of recession (they're trying but it's not working).

This is a classic example of how propaganda works. The layman's definition of recession, which has never been used officially or by policy-makers in America, is this bit about "negative GDP growth for two quarters".

But despite that not being how we've always determined recessions here, if you read the reply above, the user has literally invented a political conspiracy about their ignorance about economics. The layman's definition isn't right? It's more complicated than a one-liner on the news? No! It's a conspiracy!

This is EXACTLY how the propaganda is designed to affect them. Empower the ignorance such that layman's understanding is the only valid understanding, impugn the experts until economics is nothing more than an election year conspiracy.

For anyone interested in the truth of how recessions have been determined in the United States for the past sixty years, it's only about three paragraphs of information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bureau_of_Economic_Re...

Your own wikipedia link references the standard - the standard used by the media and the traders that it's two quarters of negative GDP. NBER does tend to be considered the official source.. and they tend to announce them about a year after they happen. NBER is important but "determiner of recession" is not quite their job role.

You need only to glance at the markets to see the reality of the situation we are in.

The argument the WH made for us not being in a recession is that employment is high. That situation is quickly changing.

Be fair: the link references the standard, but does so in order to say that that's not how the NBER defines a recession.

> The NBER uses a broader definition of a recession than commonly appears in the media. A definition of a recession commonly used in the media is two consecutive quarters of a shrinking gross domestic product (GDP). In contrast, the NBER defines a recession as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales". Business cycle dates are determined by the NBER dating committee. Typically, these dates correspond to peaks and troughs in real GDP, although not always so.

...

> Though not listed by the NBER, another factor in favor of this alternate definition is that a long term economic contraction may not always have two consecutive quarters of negative growth, as was the case in the recession following the bursting of the dot-com bubble.

At the end of the day, the definition of Recession doesn't matter.

There are ZERO changes or decision anyone can make (including policy) based on whoever's definition of recession is.

It's really weird that humans come up with these arbitrary definitions that doesn't matter but choose that hill to die on.

Thought experiment: Knowing and feeling all the economic news around you, what decision would you make if (or what decision should policy makers make)

a) we are in some arbitrary definition of Recession?

b) we are not in some arbitrary definition of Recession?

There really is none

>the NBER defines a recession as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales".

Which we have right now. But don't trust objective observations of reality. Just Trust the Experts™ and call anyone who disagrees a conspiracy theorist.

> "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months,

> real GDP

> real income

real income is down ~1% since Sept 2020 or Sept 2021 [1]. hardly seems like a "significant decline".

> employment

employment has increased since Sept 2020 or Sept 2021 [2] and infact has been steadily increasing since April 2020.

> industrial production

industrial production has increased since Sept 2020 or Sept 2021 [3] and infact has been steadily increasing since April 2020.

> wholesale-retail sales

retail sales has increased since Sept 2020 or Sept 2021 [4] and infact has been steadily increasing since April 2020.

so 1 of 5 indicators shows significant decline, 1 shows minor decline, 3 show increase.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPI

[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PAYEMS

[3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/INDPRO

[4] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RSXFS

The link you posted supports the GP’s assertion that not declaring the current economic situation as a recession is politically motivated. The third paragraph specific cites common criticism of the NBER on that very front.

That there could and should be some more sophisticated, objective definition of a recession than “two years of GDP decline” isn’t in question. But, at least according to your own source, NBER fails to provide that definition and is commonly criticized for is subjectivity during political years.

> The link you posted supports the GP’s assertion that not declaring the current economic situation as a recession is politically motivated.

1/5 indicators shows significant decline (real GDP) I'll give you. but 1/5 is slight decline (real income 1% down), the other 3 (employment, industrial production, retail sales) are up. this is based on data available from FRED, do you have data showing otherwise?

links at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33032470#33036403

Or maybe THIS is exactly how propaganda works, swapping between the connotations and denotations of words when it's politically convenient to. It's also clear to me if the president had an R next to his name, both sides of the "Are we in a recession?" debate would swap entirely.

"Accuse your enemy of that which you are guilty of"

"Yes, exactly"

Who debated the 2020 recession?

It didn't have two quarters of real GDP growth, but it did have massive job losses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_Unit...

Well I just found Paul Krugman writing about the "COVID-19 Recession" here on april 30: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/opinion/economy-stock-mar...

Looked at national review, can't even find an article about the subject; https://www.google.com/search?q=recession+site:nationalrevie...

Everyone was preoccupied with other questions mostly at that time, and a lot of the debate was if policy X was too costly economically, more so than "are we in a recession?"

Krugman didn't debate recession semantics.

My point is, if you are going to claim we are in a recession now, to be intellectually consistent, you also have to claim that 2020 wasn't one of the shortest and sharpest recessions ever in history...

Oh i thought you were curious, to test my theory with people on the left and right that are fighting now over it what they used to say. I looked at Krugman because he's a major figure on the left saying we aren't (or weren't 2 months ago) in a recession https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/2022/07/29/paul-...

I just looked and National Review even wrote this on the subject at the time - https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/recession-are-we-there... so maybe I need a better representative for the right and left to measure intellectual consistency.

IDK I'm not that interested in finding partisan hacks in the online debate on the subject. I will say just looking around, observing metrics and being told this isn't a recession the country is going through right now seems absurd.

That’s a lot of uses of “conspiracy theory”, “ignorance” and “propaganda” for the proof of your superior intellect and immunity to propaganda to be… a link to wikipedia.

Going off how much you have positioned yourself as an expert on economics and human psychology, I was expecting this to end with “Here is a link to my dissertation on this very issue!”

This isn't a PhD level argument here.

I agree! I suppose more informed people would probably have spent more of the post talking about the topic at hand rather than throwing around insults and accusing people of spreading conspiracy theories.

It is still pretty funny to see someone spend 80% of a post describing their acumen at spotting a social phenomenon (conspiracy theories and ignorance) only to follow it up with a wiki link about something wholly unrelated to ignorance or conspiracy theories.

For example, here’s a link to how to gather information: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia

I’d argue that anyone using such confident language to declare a clear definition of one of the most subjective and abstract concepts known to man clearly has some ulterior motive. Political or otherwise.

The definition of recession has always been two quarters of negative gdp growth… very recently the current administration in the US changed the definition so as to not look bad.

NBER is the entity which demarcates the start and end dates of recessions in the US, not the White House.

Who gave them that power?

Seems more reasonable to let an economic term be governed by the consensus of economists over time.

> Google has historically been protective of their front page, why now?

Unreasonable shareholder expectations of continued double-digit percentage YoY growth. Growth that exceeds internet usage growth in general.

The only way that happens is more ads displacing content, or appearing in formerly empty spots. I would guess at this point, they've hit the wall on alternatives like better targeting, placement, etc.

> The only way that happens is more ads displacing content, or appearing in formerly empty spots.

Or eeking out more dollars per ad through better targetting, or through diversifying the business and scaling new revenue streams, or ...

I think it's reasonable to expect Google to grow faster than general internet usage. Believing otherwise means you believe Google is in maintenance mode, incapable of improving their existing product or unlocking new revenue streams through innovation. Given the sheer size of Google, that's quite a bold belief to hold.

The sheer size of google is the best reason to believe they can't innovate any more.

You can look at the historical track for both

- unlocking new revenue streams. Some success here, but modest, going from ~90% of revenue from ads to ~80%. But it all moved to GCP, which still operates at a loss. That doesn't take any pressure off the ads.

- revenue gains with targeting or other things that don't push real content down. It's pretty easy to find historical screen shots of how much the organic content gets pushed down below the fold. Today, most of the lucrative queries have almost nothing but ads above the fold. ("iphone", "vegas hotels", "robot vacuum").

or taking advertising dollars from orher channels like print, outdoor advertising, radio and TV.

Google has been promoting other Google products on the home page for over 20 years [1].

I think the only difference this time around is that people didn't realize Fitbit was acquired by Google.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt2iPpJmySU

>most people expect that we are going into a recession

by the standard definition we are already in one, odds are we are actually going to enter a global depression and probably one worse than 2008

If even a fraction of what many are predicting comes to transpire over the next few months, then you can likely change 2008 to 1929.

I don't buy the SP500 graph argument, economies tend to behave on a log scale.

Perhaps all those people claiming to put in two or three hours each day there aren't as productive as they believed themselves to be. I wonder how much that particular brand of hubris will be tolerated now times are tough.

I’m not sure I’d call that quick. Quick would be a single deep cut and return to normal operations.

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