Google is screwed, even if it wins its antitrust case
gizmodo.com
gizmodo.com
Furthermore, the product that made their name is thoroughly lost. I dread Google Search today. If I found something on Google yesterday, I have no idea if I'll be able to locate it through the sea of blog SPAM and SEO garbage tomorrow. Google web search strongly favors big websites when sometimes the page you need is never going to be there. As an example, Google puts heavy weight on near-SPAM sites like Pinterest which produce almost no original content, and on abusive hosts like Fandom (formerly Wikia) who manages to beat out community wikis by replacing admins that try to migrate off and winning in SEO.
I am not trying to suggest Duck Duck Go or Bing are actually better overall, but if I see a web search covered in results like that, I sometimes find that they do in fact give me somewhat better result rankings.
The only thing I really have any strong affection for is YouTube, and the people and content that made the platform special are constantly unhappy with it's corporate direction, not to mention the utter lack of support, claiming and affirming in appeals stupid pointless crap like "you said a naughty word in the first ten seconds of the video" when anyone with working ears can easily verify they did not.
And that's the tip of the iceberg. I think a lot of ventures, like GMail, only ever made sense as computers and bandwidth just kept getting dramatically cheaper. It's difficult to beat free. Well, what happens when those things stop getting cheaper, and GMail keeps getting more expensive to run?
> I am not trying to suggest Duck Duck Go or Bing are actually better overall
Kagi is, however. Well worth putting your money where your mouth is and supporting them.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/24/ddg-microsoft-tracking-blo...
Their founder is also on record as "down ranking misinformation", which is not a judgment call I want my search engine making. Relevance and truth are two different things.
https://mashable.com/article/duckduckgo-search-engine-russia...
The sketchy and indirect way they engage with this criticism put me off of ever trusting DDG.
Granted, this would probably be a very miniscule amount of their users.
https://www.amazon.com/Mullvad-VPN-Devices-Protect-Security/...
- Advanced search operators actually work. When you quote something it actually searches for that exact string, when you minus something it actually excludes it.
- Categorization in the search results; for instance all of the low signal listicles can be segregated into their own section.
- Image search that is not intentionally nerfed that will just give you the image directly
- The ability to up and down rank specific sites from your results (something you can't feasibly do without an account anyways); good riddance Pinterest and spammy stack* reposters
- DDG-like bang searches, with the ability to add custom sites
- The obvious one: no ads or tracking or perverse incentives
Have been using Kagi since the invite phase. The moment they opened up and switched to subscription, I immediately subscribed (you'll run out of the free quota in ~3-4h - 50 searches per month).
Paying 10$/mo for something you do hundreds of times a day, and getting consistently better results than Google, Bing or DDG, doesn't seem too much to me. I happily gave up D+ subscription to have Kagi instead. It's very rare for me to have to scroll past for the first 5 results with Kagi. With the other search engines, nowadays I can't find anything relevant in the first page.
And they have an actual Roadmap: https://kagifeedback.org/roadmap
I don't think it should be priced as high. I think they should add other services maybe w/ their own prices, like a photonmail competitor, and api's so people can build things off their tech but pay per query, etc.
I think they could at least have tiers like 100/month 1, 400 searches for $2.99, 1000 for $5.99, unlimited for 8.99. They'd reach a bigger audience, which would likely mean more dollars overall. If I were them, I'd also create a mobile app that's completely free, just to get people hooked on the results while using mobile, or maybe have some privacy-based ads in the app, though the actual search results would have none, and remove that for paid accounts.
I’m not sure what these people are searching for but I want to pay for a search engine that doesn’t show ads and doesn’t track me. A credit card comes with the territory for mass adoption.
This is mostly an aside, but it's worth putting into perspective that many of these complaints are related to Google's ads and automatic monetization through ads, as well as their content recommendation network/userbase.
In other words, I think as Google's ad-revenue shrinks (or the bubble bursts), the Youtube ad policies will seem to become more and more draconian, but despite all the anger towards Youtube, the alternatives involve... no (automatic) monetization at all.
I don't think a lot of people are really conscious of how a lot of modern Youtube (specifically the big content creators who have made careers out of Google's monetization options) are implicitly reliant on Google's ad-tech bubble. And most people are pretty derisive of Google's attempts at alternative monetization e.g. youtube premium. I fear when the bubble bursts (or just shrinks a lot), a lot of the high quality content people enjoy on youtube will burst or shrink with it.
This is 100% what it boils down to. Google is obviously not the only advertiser in town, but if the ad bubble pops, so does the free content economy on the internet. Some people will argue the internet would be better because of it, but the transition away from ad-supported viewership would decimate the web we know.
I'm not saying I disagree with you by any means; a lot of what we would lose would be a great shame. Only the strongest creators could probably find a way to stay alive, likely through more direct sponsorship (both Patreon and well, traditional direct sponsors. You already see this a ton on YouTube anyways.)
I get that the internet will never be as scrappy and experimental as it once was, but the way monetization spread rewarded a lot of people who thrived off of essentially taking free stuff and monetizing it. I mean a lot. Think of "prominent" "content creators" and "influencers" like Fuck Jerry. In the process of doing this, I think all of the fun was milked out of everything. Today's internet feels like a giant strip mall.
I really do wonder if this is the best middleground we can get.
Of course, if ad-tech does turn out to be more or less a giant bubble and that bubble pops, we lose everything anyways, without any chance to transition, and all of the anguish was for naught. It feels like quite a gamble to keep hinging on this so strongly for the best content online, so I hope that the patronage model continues to grow.
The attention economy is doomed, too many people are online now for it to be viable. Patronage and connecting with followers will come to dominate. Not to oversimplify, but there's a theory that all an artist needs to be financially stable is 1,000 true fans chipping in a few dollars a month. Google's YouTube middleware currently occupies a comfortable niche in the bringup process required to meet that figure... but they're ultimately nonessential.
As the bubble shrinks, creators will look back and wonder why they ever bothered driving millions of random people toward a platform that mostly pays out to Google.
First, it's not just big YouTubers moving towards the patron model. I see many smaller creators doing the same, and I'm some cases thriving.
Second, I don't agree that the patron model will become the dominant model. I think this line of thinking is more of a medieval model from which the word derives. In terms of the number of people paying by ads & PII or through patronage, the ads& PII crowd will win. (the dollar value per contribution might be lower).
Third, I don't have any reason to believe that creators will "look back and wonder" why they would like to attract a million viewers. I think it might be a very good way to advertise to their patr(e)on-age.
Finally, there is another revenue model of direct sponsorship / placed ads which you do not seem to consider. I think it is a major contributor to the economics of medium-large creators.
Maybe my gut feeling is a response to your notion of the "attention economy being doomed" because "there are too many people online". To me, it seems the opposite. The attention economy is thriving because there are so many people online.
(Interesting topic! Thanks for making me type all of this)
I disagree with this, though I'd love (and genuinely hope) to be proven wrong. It's hard for me to imagine starting from nothing and building up a profitable following the way people have on Youtube without Youtube's userbase and infamous "algorithm".
It might just be a matter of semantics, though. I agree that content/media existed before Youtube and will exist long after it -- but I'm not sure Youtube's niche of non-traditional content creators without the money or social networks traditionally needed to publish media could do so in its absence.
More prosaically, there's a big gulf between starting out, and reaching 1,000 true fans throwing some money at you every month. Youtube plays a pretty big role IMO in bridging that gap, and without it, only people with traditional support networks or in higher economic classes will be able to afford "doing content creation" full time.
I feel like a common response (and one sort of echoed in another reply) is "Good, let's bring the old internet back, when people did things for passion and not money". I sympathize a lot with this, but I also think a lot of content I enjoy is the product of people putting tons of time and effort into making "good content" -- time spent doing pretty miserable and uninteresting work. So I'm inclined to think the end of the "youtube era" will bring the end of a certain class of creator.
Not that I think this is preventable, since like others here, I think the whole ad thing is unsustainable, and we're seeing more and more writing on the wall. Hopefully Patreon + co. and more decentralized content aggregators like Mastodon can fill the void well enough.
And if you can make it to 1000, it's pretty easy to make it to 2000, and then more - of course just getting to that 1000 can be a long slow challenge to be sure.
*Excluding the more expensive subscriptions, donations, “bits”
If ad revenue shrinks, making ads less useful for them (or even if not, given the patronage trend) why wouldn’t Google just enable the patronage model as a monetization model within YouTube, unencumbered by concerns for ad-based (or general audience) monetization.
Going to a three-tier (1) free/nonmonetized, (2) premium (with or without ads as an alternative to viewer-pays-google flat rate), (3) paid-subscriber-only model for content (where any creator could particpate in any combination of tiwrs with different content), where the last would be free of most of the content monetization, or even just content, restrictions that apply at the other tiers, would seem to be a fairly simple and natural evolution of the service. And you could easily have the Google share at the last (and even the middle tier) ratchet down with longevity and established user base so you'd pay a bigger share when you benefit most from the platform for discovery, and less when you need it less.
The catch is that Google gets a 30% cut, compared to 3-5% for Patreon and such.
Still, that's an awful lot better than 30%.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmi...
If I have to sift through one more useless AI-generated/copy-paste article where they spend half the damn thing explaining the most basic stuff and then still not answering my question (or giving a simple "yes/no"), I'm going to lose it. It's not even just technical answers. I have to basically type "...reddit" or some forum I like to get ANYTHING useful anymore. It's even just basic media questions.
Example: "Is there an [IP sequel] being made?"
First 20 results: "Is there an [IP sequel] being made? Read more to find out. First what is IP? IP was released in 2012. It was made by such and such starring such and such as they go on an adventure to do the thing..." 4 paragraphs later "There is no information on a sequel. Thanks for reading!"
Yes I've learned to spot these as have most folks around here I imagine, but holy hell they will eat 2-3 pages of results sometimes! It's infuriating!
To use a specific example, the other day I was trying to learn more about programming shaders. There is an unending number of basic level tutorials: what is a shader? There are probably 500,000 people searching for that topic. But if I want to figure out a UV scrolling texture, I'm screwed, there's almost nothing. Because the audience for that is maybe 500 people.
There's just no financial (or even reputational!) incentive for anyone to write an article / make a video on something requiring deeper expertise. There is stuff out there, of course, created by the tiny minority of passionate enthusiasts or dedicated professionals. Google is really searching for a needle in a very, very large haystack. And I think Google (and other search) has been more and more challenged by that over the years as the internet moved from a niche enthusiast place to a mass market place. Particularly when all the hay is spending massive amounts of effort on trying to pretend to be a needle.
tl;dr I despise using Google (or DuckDuckGo) these days but I don't think all the blame should be assigned to the engines, they're actually facing a tough problem. (Not that you personally were saying that, but this is mainly a thread of hating on Google.)
See I think this becomes chicken/egg real quick too, though I do think Google is more to blame. Content creators are responding to the incentives google created. Think back to when sites would have all sorts of keywords buried in metadata and/or have blogs that were complete nonsense full of keywords that weren't easily findable on their sites. They did it because they were rewarded. So what did google do? They penalized it, and voila! It stopped. This was like...2014? Maybe earlier?
Ultimately if google wants better search results they need to go back to the drawing board. They need to disincentivize blog spam.
Sometimes I've fantasized about Google having human editorial that would evaluate these content farms as they grow and make the nuanced decisions of which to derank. But then, if they really did that, they'd get sued or regulated pretty quickly.
I feel weird arguing for Google's side since I actually do have a lot of criticisms and generally dislike Google search. I just think this content farm issue looks very thorny; humans are built to deceive each other and at some point of sophistication that gets very difficult to control.
I’m not saying I have all the answers here but I feel like this shouldn’t be too hard to at least make a dent in.
This seems to be what ChatGPT can give me. It doesn't always work, but it also doesn't beat around the bush.
I’ve had pretty good results with kagi.com
YMMV.
At the very least, pulling from Google for fonts, which nearly everyone does, announces the page where it begins the process.
By the way sites like Pinterest, dominate Google results, a stranger would incorrectly believe that it is some kind of key "go to" website of the internet.
Instead it's the reason why ordinary people need to learn negated search terms. -site:pinterest.com -walmart -amazon -alibaba
Google is under antitrust investigation for ads, while it talks about the threat to the company being AI. The main point of the article is:
> It would be a lot easier Google could move fast and break things... But with the full force of the US government bearing down on it, the search giant can’t do that now... Google will need to conduct itself slowly and tentatively in order to avoid jeopardizing itself in its battle with the Justice Department.
Sure it might need to move more slowly in its ads business (not a good time to buy an ads-related startup). But I see no evidence Google will need to act "slowly and tentatively" in terms of incorporating chatbot functionality into Search.
So I don't see anything "screwing" Google about this at all, not in the least.
Its under antitrust investigation for lots of things; its currently being prosecuted in the US for ads.
That means you're loading a fresh page of ads every search AND all the ads on those sites too.
With chatGPT (And I'm aware Google has something similar) - I can (and have) just asked it a question, and it will answer/write entire scripts for me. That means there's only a single page load.
Basically people are speculating Google may struggle to monetize a chatbot to the extent they can monetize every single search + site load. You certainly _can_ the speculation is whether the drastically lower impression counts will impact their overall profitability.
The real money is in ads that are targeted to a search -- whether you're asking Search or a chatbot for "best fleece half-zip for men" you'll get shown the same ads targeted to that.
While if you're asking it to write a script for you... you probably were to busy to be even looking at or clicking the ads Google was showing anyways back when you were looking for Stack Overflow answers, no matter if it took 100 searches. (There's also nothing stopping Google from showing you 3 new ads before each new chatbot response.)
I have full faith in Google figuring out how to insert just as many ads as before. ;)
Oh they will I'm sure - I'm just not sure if they'll make _as much_ or not. Basically the question is if they can recover the cost per impression money to cost per click IMO.
Or maybe they pivot to something way worse - like in-content ads. Oh man imagine "best fleece half-zip for men" - "The most highly recommended and best option is the [insert marketing here but make it sound great and natural]".
But yeah I highly doubt their existence is in jeopardy or anything like that.
Google Assistant dropped a year after Alexa, and Android's reach helped bolster it's marketshare (antitrust investigation or not).
The article quotes someone as saying history repeats itself. Debatable. Google built Alphabet to be defensible against antitrust cases like this. Expect a consent decree.
As you wrote: "I do see a place for language-model driven search." And unlike social media this has less dependency on user perception of whether a social network is cool.
Basically, I'm not convinced that Google is "behind" on the tech, but just disagrees about product strategy. Obviously there are lots of examples where this dooms the current leader (Xerox Parc!) - but I think it's too early to say? I wouldn't short them yet imo.
[1] https://ai.googleblog.com/2017/08/transformer-novel-neural-n...
Not that I'm complaining - the less that's under a mega-conglomerate, the better things tend to be. But it was and is a gigantic failure for Google, possibly their largest ever.
Facebook rode the wave of open 3P consumer data which is now closing everywhere, from DMA to iOS restrictions. That's why they're trying desperately to pivot to the metaverse, so they can use first party data. Facebook is currently experiencing an existential threat.
Social media diminished to algortihmic media (e.g. TikTok) which will likely diminish to AI media sooner rather than later.
Google can still point to it and say "billions missed out on" though, and not a single person in the board room will disagree.
Meta-wise, I'm glad the acronym is now MANGA, and I have my popcorn ready. The metaverse is the second biggest joke I've seen this much money spent on, second only to NFTs. I quite like VR, but "owning" "the metaverse" is unbelievable nonsense.
So what's the scoop? I use ChatGPT, it hasn't replaced my search engine. They're insisting that search is obsoleted with AI (and Google is spooked internally) but I have yet to see any research-based evidence supporting it. Personally, I use both tools for completely different things, and while they are similar by-way-of a text box with a prompt, their responses are completely distinct and neither one can replace the other.
If you look at a revenue breakdown[1] and then also figure in that search has much higher margins than the other areas, it's pretty skewed to search dollars. They've improved it some, but there's a long way to go.
[1] https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/how-does-google-make-money
Google gave me listicles instead...
They're useful in their own right, but you can't fool yourself into believing either one cannibalizes the other.
But there is no reason to think that it will be correct, structurally. While you can find examples that work, the AI does not know the truth. An AI does NOT have an understanding of populations, locations, etc.
Google didn’t return answers, but it directed you to sites with answers. Those sites were like curated by hand by a human who does understand the meaning of the data
I think they care waaaay more for billion-dollar products than for billion-user products.
> and their advertising business doesn't seem threatened much by this either.
Is it? What fraction of their ad revenues comes from ads on search result pages?
What will happen is that new use cases will be set in place. Some people might head to Google for diversity of results. Others will prefer ChatGPT for one single search result.
In my opinion, only the "I'm feeling lucky" function on Google will be challenged or replaced.
How can a tech journalist imagine that noobs will modify the default search engine on their Chrome browser and Android smartphones? These guys are not realistic.
But what happens when marketing spend goes down (as it does in a recession)? What happens when customers aren't willing to pay as much for your advertising product (as happens in a recession)? What happens when borrowed money can't be secured easily, and debts come due (once again, as happens in a recession)?
Are people really ready for an economy where user data isn't massively lucrative? Are people really ready for an economy where advertising doesn't pay enough to support the "free" services we take for granted? Are people really ready for a world where free video hosting, free hard drives, free email, free cloud-run office software are not sustainable?
Typically - what happens is - central banks lower interest rates until they're negative in real yields - and people start spending like crazy again.
Who knows what will happen in the future. But that's been the previous playbook.
The worst that happened was 10% inflation - which is a FAR cry from hyperinflation.
We had negative real rates for a decade before Covid - and the worst that happened was ~7% home price appreciation.
We're not going to get anything resembling "hyper" unless this country basically becomes another country.
This is mostly true. If it wasn't worth it, businesses wouldn't spend money on it. At my last startup we spent money on ads that were worth it, for us, so we stopped. We also found ads that were worth it, so we spent more.
> ad revenue will always increase
Ad revenue is cyclical, it's often the first thing to get cut and the first thing to come back, but it's always going to be there in some form barring a completely new economy.
> the market for digital advertising and targeted digital advertising in particular will always be large enough to support the behemoth that it is today.
Advertising shifts around from time to time (e.g. print->TV->online), but it seems unlikely that it's not going to be digital for the foreseeable future, and targeted will likely always outperform non-targeted. That's not to say it will stay at any particular company/property/app/etc. but unfortunately at this stage it's probably only going to concentrate and migrate from one behemoth to another like it has for most of the history of the industry.
(I work for Google but not in AI, search or ads)
Simple, context based advertising is much easier/simpler to implement --- no privacy invasion required. It also annoys the consumer a lot less and by some accounts is more cost effective.
Amazon in a ecommerce site. If I go there and search for widgets, I should reasonably expect (and maybe even appreciate) some ads from widget makers. What I don't expect and what I find annoying is ads for widgets following me all over the internet for days; even on non-commerce sites; even after I already made my widget purchase at a brick and mortar --- aka, the Google "personalized" approach.
"Personalized" ads are really kinda dumb --- but apparently Google has "sold" enough advertisers on the idea so they can charge a premium for them.
Yes, they’re a large, bureaucratic organization, that’s incapable of developing new products or avenues of growth.
For the sake of argument though, let’s say Google created a product on par with ChatGPT, they would just kill it after a few months like every other Google service that they’ve made.
(like IBM 20 years before that)
now MS aren't even trendsetter, but they are still raking in the cash
they are pretty much exactly where IBM was 20 years ago
yes, being that the web is THE current platform for technology
in the same way Win32 was 20 years ago
> Also, calling "relevant industry giant making heaps of money" a failure scenario is quite a stretch.
I didn't call it a failure scenario
IBM's making quite a lot of money still (though trending down and not nearly as much as it used to)
Google has a lot of legitimate headwinds, but honestly I don’t think antitrust or AI competitors are them.
The legitimate “destruction” of legitimacy on the internet, thus making Search more error prone is an issue. Closed off ecosystems such as apple is an issue.
The antitrust case is a big deal, but it’s unlikely Google would be broken up due to it.
I remember when Copilot came out last year and everyone was up in arms about how it will replace most developers, then the chatter quickly died when people realized that it's not that great outside a few specific scenarios, it just looked like it could kill the SWE industry from people that haven't been inside of it.
Now it seems the same is happening with ChatGPT. While it's easy to draw conclusions based on what you've seen ChatGPT do, I wonder if it will provide long term value or be a gimmick much like Copilot, having a bunch of simple applications but fail at the more advanced applications (which would be required for it to dethrone say Google Search).
Personally I think LLM/GPT will never replace the current Google search, it however will be baked into almost every search engine and allow an "alternative" way to search the web, where you get answers to simple questions right away without having to go to a website.
That's what Google does quite a lot already anyway. The difference is that Google directly cites its source and offers alternative links - which is necessary, since if you need to verify the answer with a Google search, you might as well skip asking ChatGPT (or an equivalent) beforehand.
Since ChatGPT is fundamentally trained to do a different thing (word completion), I have a hard time imagining that you can sufficiently coax it into replacing an actual search. But we will see.
How do you do that? Well you need an index of the web and a good ranking algo... oh wait.
For example, Apple. Why aren't the software and hardware divisions separated, at a minimum? Furthermore, I might wonder, why couldn't iPhone, iPad, Mac, Audio Accessories etc. be separate companies? Sure, you'd lose a ton of the integration that makes it special... but I wonder sometimes if the world would be a better place. Same for Microsoft: Why can't Windows, Office, Azure, Xbox, all be separate companies? If Windows was an independent company I think it would probably be way healthier for Windows at this point (less Microsoft bloat)...
I feel (just feel) that publicly-traded companies should be forced to pick a market segment and stick to it, and any other businesses that get too large (say, $1B revenue) must be broken off.
See, for example, Standard Oil. They massively lowered oil prices - we broke them up. See also AT&T. Once their usefulness as a monopoly ran out, we broke them up.
Plus, we can see that hardware-software coevolution has large benefits - but who is to say that having companies separate does not also have large benefits of its own? You might not have Windows shoving Microsoft Teams and Edge and Bing down your throat... or Apple pushing Apple Music to your parents. If Apple can't integrate, perhaps we'd have more open standards for interoperability.
I’ve always thought of Apple having an emphasis on vertical integration(hardware+software=product). So maybe their foray into services would be the line in the sand?
Which maybe isn’t the worst. Maybe we’d see an exodus of the rats in our own govt and leadership as they chase their efforts into the new world leaders.
Maybe this is the end stage of capitalism and while it was a good experiment to get us into worth surplus it comes at the cost of liberty. Maybe at some point we just need to tweak the entire economic system into the next era.
I am familiar with ChatGPT composing reasonable sounding answers to prompts. I get that I could type in "what's the best vacuum cleaner under $500?" or something like that, and both Google and ChatGPT could generate an answer for me.
But I want the best, most accurate answer, not a set of banalities that a neural network has composed to convincingly pass the sniff test. I actually care about the content being right, or as close to right as possible.
I admit freely that I'm clearly missing some possibilities here. Can anyone fill me in?
Google could use the same criteria as ChatGPT to filter the input. Then why would search be any worse?
Are they? ChatGPT is by all means a loss leader; I don't see why Google would need a halo AI product right now.
Q: What is superglue?
A: Super glue, also known as cyanoacrylate, is a type of adhesive that forms a strong bond quickly and can be used on a variety of surfaces. It is often used for small repairs, such as broken ceramics or toys, and can also be used in crafts and other projects. Super glue is available in liquid or gel form, and is sold in small tubes or bottles. It should be used with caution, as it can bond skin together and can be difficult to remove.
For your superglue needs, you can't do much better than Gorilla brand superglue. Its high strength and quick set time make Gorilla Super Glue the go-to adhesive for a variety of household projects.
Edit: There used to be a radio guy, I believe it was Joe Franklin who blended the ads into his spiel so you couldn't tell when the ad started and left off, so maybe it will be something like this.
A: Super glue, also known as cyanoacrylate, is a type of adhesive that forms a strong bond quickly and can be used on a variety of surfaces. A brand like Gorilla with it's high strength and quick setting time making it perfect for for small repairs, such as broken ceramics or toys, and can also be used in crafts and other projects. Super glue is available in liquid or gel form, and is sold in small tubes or bottles. It should be used with caution, as it can bond skin together and can be difficult to remove.
They're trying to move into paid YouTube subs. They presumably could try the same with search.
"Hey friend, have you ever had a broken vase or a pair of glasses that you thought were beyond repair? Well, let me tell you, super glue is a game changer. It's strong, fast-drying, and can fix just about anything. Trust me, I've used it on everything from ceramic to plastic and it works like a charm. So, next time you have a household emergency, don't throw it away, just grab the super glue and fix it up like new. You'll be amazed at how easy and effective it is!"
Prompt: Write some ad copy for me in the style of a friend recommending I use Gorilla brand superglue
"Hey there! Are you tired of using weak, unreliable glues for your DIY projects and household repairs? Look no further than Gorilla super glue! This stuff is seriously strong and durable. I've used it to fix everything from a broken toy to a wobbly chair, and it holds up like a champ. Plus, it dries quickly and forms a bond that's almost impossible to break. I trust Gorilla super glue so much that I wouldn't use anything else. Give it a try, and you'll see the difference for yourself."
And honestly while I was there, there were plenty of jokes about how this was already happening, then Google was the new Microsoft.
Did the recent layoff apocalypse hit Gizmodo editors too?
"Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users... we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers... 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."
Google in 2003: Eric "You can trust us with your data" Schmidt convinces Sergey and Larry of the bonkers amount of money they can make by adding a monopoly on digital search advertising to leverage their monopoly on digital search. They proceed to switch to the same advertising business model that hindered their early competitors.
Google in 2008: Buys out Doubleclick to maintain Adsense's monopoly on digital search advertising and doubles down on surveillance capitalism.
Google in 2011: Buys out AdMeld, changes AdX contracts to be even more anticompetitive to maintain monopoly on digital search advertising.
Google in 2017: Loses $2.7 billion antitrust lawsuit in the EU. Response? No changes to business model, but oust a vocal supporter of the decision from Google-funded think tank New America. [1]
Google in 2023: Sued again.
I really hate this kind of inscrutable industry rhetoric. Why can't they just speak plainly?
I should overlook this spelling error. But if you’re going to make bold predictions, maybe proofread it first?
They are like a player of Monopoly who bought everything.
Alphabet shouldn't exist in its current form and so Apple, Amazon and many other corporations.
Hopefully, pushback from European regulators who are harder to fool (or buy out) will force the US to admit there's egg on our face. We've let corporate America write the rules for too long, and our democratic control over their abuse has become dilute and helpless. Something's gotta give, and I'm cheering for the countries that take user privacy and consumer rights seriously.
Hopefully. But don't underestimate the general public's abject apathy and religious belief that more "freedom" in markets fixes everything, even when it is obvious that bad actors are employing dark patterns to exploit the anarchy.
Like it or not, a lot of things require very large companies to get done. Small companies can't build jumbo-jet airplanes.