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> 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.

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.

> the alternatives involve... no (automatic) monetization at all.

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'd argue the internet I liked most was decimated by the current free content economy, though.

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.

Yea exactly. At this point I am checked out of the mass internet and the things I do use (other than HN I suppose) I’m glad to pay for.

Google is the only advertiser in town that matters. There's some private clubs you can go to (Facebook's properties, Amazon) but for generally placing ads or selling ad space on the internet it's Google.

Big YouTubers have seen the writing on the wall, and have been diversifying income streams for years. A lot of artists are migrating towards the "patron" model (think Renaissance patronage, but crowd-sourced) using tools like Patreon or Liberapay. This strikes me as inherently more pure than throwing videos at Google's algorithm to see which one can bring home the biggest slice of automatic-ad-revenue pie.

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.

I agree with most of what you say here, but a few small points to contest:

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)

> Google's YouTube middleware currently occupies a comfortable niche in the bringup process required to meet that figure... but they're ultimately nonessential.

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.

Yeah, the 1000 fans thing can totally work, depending on what your market looks like. $10/mo * 1000 is $120k/yr, which is a perfectly reasonable stable base from which to pursue a creative career (music, art, indie game dev, writing).

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.

That is a lot of money for one creator to command per month. I can’t imagine spending $120/yr just for one YouTubers content.

Twitch has proven that millions of people are willing to pay 5$ or more* a month to support someone else for essentially no extra benefits

*Excluding the more expensive subscriptions, donations, “bits”

> A lot of artists are migrating towards the "patron" model

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.

Google has already created channel memberships, where the channel can offer perks like member-only content in exchange for additional payment to the channel owner. It certainly looks like an attempt to squeeze out Patreon and similar services.

The catch is that Google gets a 30% cut, compared to 3-5% for Patreon and such.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7491256

To be fair Patreon's pricing is somewhat complicated. By their own admission their cut is 5-12%

Good point, I forgot to account for the platform fee, which they charge in addition to the payment processing fees. So a creator on the Pro plan pays 8% just to use the services plus processing fees (2.9% plus $0.30 if over $3). So it seems like a typical creator would pay around 12%.

Still, that's an awful lot better than 30%.

I use search for coding a lot, and lately I've noticed it's hard to find what I'm after. If I'm looking for some small thing like what an sftp command looks like, I don't want an SEO essay about why SSH is great and we should all use encryption. I just want the example line.

This seems to be what ChatGPT can give me. It doesn't always work, but it also doesn't beat around the bush.

100%. I have found it sooo difficult to trace framework/library documentation down that 3-4 years ago was first few results. Something has ruined their algorithm.

Yup, exactly the same experience here. It feels like there's been a recent wave of SEO-optimized websites that consistently pop up when I google specific errors, but rarely have literally anything of substance.

Yet.

Until ChatGPT starts giving you responses crafted from those SEO sites.

GPT is probably crafting those sites and like has been for a while now

That is odd, what exactly were you looking for? In my case Google results are still top notch. Sometimes I search for SO question every X years and I’m always able to find it easily.

Pretty much any minor thing like what does some syntax look like. I get both SEO essays and StackOverflow copycat sites.

> I have no idea if I'll be able to locate it through the sea of blog SPAM and SEO garbage tomorrow

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!

This kind of problem isn't just because of search, it's also because of content creators. I believe what all content creators quickly learn is, on any given topic, the funnel is extremely wide on the most introductory knowledge and then becomes uselessly narrow as you drill into specific info.

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.)

>This kind of problem isn't just because of search, it's also because of content creators.

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.

Yeah, but penalizing people based on metadata or keyword lists is incredibly easy. Compare that to trying to figure out which recipe site is keyword stuffing vs which happens to have a story by someone who really did journey to Tuscany to learn the perfect cacciucco recipe.

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.

Hell just threaten it and make a few examples of folks to dissuade it. A business isn’t going to risk it if they’re worried they could be the unlucky ones. The ones hitting the top search results aren’t randoms making hundreds of sites, it’s often just C-tier blog sites that depend on dishing this stuff out regularly to get ad traffic.

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.

Almost a meme at this point:

> 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.

Kagi has been a delightful experience for me for two months. Don't think I'm ever going back.

So, I googled Kagi, found their link… Not only is it required to create an account to use their service, they want a credit card to bill as well! Hard pass.

Yes, as a paid service who directly sells their primary product rather than a data mining, anti-privacy homunculus whose most famous product is merely a means to an end, an account and payment is required. This is strictly better than Google.

DuckDuckGo is 100% privacy focused, free, and doesn’t require an account or credit card to use.

They are privacy focused in as much as they don't track you themselves, they just hand you off to Microsoft to be tracked.

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.

> Their founder is also on record as "down ranking misinformation"

https://mashable.com/article/duckduckgo-search-engine-russia...

Also here, straight from the horse's mouth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33247856

The sketchy and indirect way they engage with this criticism put me off of ever trusting DDG.

Thanks!

If you are into self-hosting, I hear Searx is pretty good. Been thinking on setting that up on my personal server so I can just stop relying on companies

The problem is DuckDuckGo is very USA and English focused. I've switched to it myself long ago, but it's very frustrating when I search for things and it brings up American shops higher than anything else. I'm not going to 5,000km to go shopping. You move out of English it's even worse. For general tech searching it's on par with Google. But if you are looking for things locally I often find the need to switch back to Google.

It has a location toggle at the top of the results page. It works fine for me, and I’m not from an English-speaking country.

Yes, and it's not as good.

What would you prefer? Anonymous payments? And regardless of payment method, how would you avoid creating an account to tie the payment to?

Payment via digital gift cards sold on Amazon, e.g. Mullvad

Granted, this would probably be a very miniscule amount of their users.

That's not how businesses process payment. Any responsible finance department will call a hard no on that. (And from a consumer side, asking to pay with a gift card is usually a huge red flag that a scam is incoming)

I believe they mean a gift card for their service, as in they should offer gift cards. Not send us $50 worth of Google Play gift cards.

https://www.amazon.com/Mullvad-VPN-Devices-Protect-Security/...

Yep

This Valentine's Day, give someone the true gift of love, a search.

Are you sure about the credit card? I signed up without one. There is a free option.

Cool. Continue using Google then.

Interesting - haven't heard of Kagi before but I looked them up and I can definitely see how a subscription-funded search engine leads to a better incentive structure. But can you provide qualitative examples of how your experience has been better than on Google?

- Result relevance seems on par with Google about five years ago. Very rare that I need to go past page 1.

- 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

Agree with this, 100%.

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

Honestly, It's the same price as copilot, which is imho one of my biggest tools in my coding arsenal currently.

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.

They said something like this after I exhausted my daily search allowance during the beta: go search somewhere else. I mean who are these disrespectful little pricks/snotty kids? :DDD

Im thinking on going with Searx instead. I don't want to pay money, and I already have a server I use for a variety of reasons. I get why most wouldn't want to do that...self hosting isn't for everybody. But I would prefer it to paying someone else or having my data sold

Yep. Let those below argue over “they want a credit card!” as if that isn’t exactly what people have been begging for. I gladly pay for Kagi and people who are now complaining because it doesn’t have some esoteric payment method were never looking to have the problem solved in the first place.

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.

> 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.

I’ve had pretty good results with kagi.com

YMMV.

I agree, which is why manually blacklisting them became a necessity for me. I loved uBlocklist, and would recommend it for anyone not on Kagi.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmi...

You're ignoring mobile + local + timely searches which are incredibly common and very valuable. Google doesn't put "heavy weight" on Pinterest or "SPAM and SEO garbage" there. These SERPs are full of local and useful results and paid ads/placements. This is where Google's interests lie.

You raise an excellent point about Googling.

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

Devil's advocate, lots of Google services are 100% benevolent. Like Google Open Fonts. Did you know most of the font licenses packaged with Windows, you're not even allowed to package them into a game?

There is nothing altruistic about Google. It is all about collecting as much metadata as possible to feed the ad tech money pump.

At the very least, pulling from Google for fonts, which nearly everyone does, announces the page where it begins the process.

since you talked about adtech being a bubble, I'll hijack your post to recommend this book: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374538651/subprimeattenti...