Google has been regularly losing marketshare to Amazon because people perform searches for products directly there when previously it was done through google-search.
Ironically Amazon has been so aggressive with the ads recently I've lost all trust in searching on Amazon itself. I'm back to using Google to find the Amazon product page.
On Amazon I search for a specific brand and model and it's on page 4, buried until endless sponsored products. I have to go my order history to find the product page now. Sometimes the Amazon search is not just all endless products but literally incorrect products, stuff that I would have to return if I bought it by accident. Like yesterday Amazon kept showing lightbulbs with the wrong physical socket size.
Amazon product search feels not just bad but actively hostile, something I have to fight against to find the thing I actually want.
I wish this was a joke, but they did increase the cost of prime to pay for that trash, rather than focusing on what people really use Prime for.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/ama...
And I very much enjoyed the Lord of the Rings series they did. High production quality and pretty good story telling. But I suppose I am easily entertained.
People keep going on about AI but the worlds most valuable company is incapable of arranging shit they sell into correct categories. You could be looming for a toothbrush and they will sell you a car seat.
Alza.cz delivers all over EU, they have an actual human categorise their stock, and it's a much better experience.
They don't sell absolutely everything, but they have electronics, Scooters, teslas, home appliances - you name it.
Amazon could improve their usability so much by providing proper metadata entry systems for sellers and enforce their proper usage by moderating their platform.
But that costs money, there are more than enough customers still buying stuff off of Amazon and the real cash cow is AWS anyway.
This exact thing happened to me. One of the problems, was that the bulb I was looking at, had a specific mini-candelabra socket, and the ones they showed me, had one that was just slightly larger, but looked almost identical (and the name was also “mini candelabra”). This was one of those “recommendations,” in the list at the bottom.
I actually ordered the wrong bulbs, based on this, and had to return them.
I have also had Amazon direct me to gray market and counterfeit goods, with extreme confidence; often insisting that the dodgy product was being sold by the manufacturer.
I now order direct from the manufacturer, for anything over about $50, even if I pay more (happens less frequently, these days. Amazon is no longer the bargain it used to be, and even gray market now sells for full retail). Sometimes, the manufacturers use Amazon for fulfillment, but I don’t mind, as they direct me to the real product.
It’s not 100% Amazon’s fault, as the scammers have figured out how to game the system, but Amazon is not trying to fix it. I assume that this is because they make so much money.
I have heard, anecdotally, that selling on Amazon has become a nightmare, for legit sellers; especially small ones. The scammers have no problem, putting up with B.S., but real sellers can drown.
Here’s something I experienced, a couple of years ago, when I was looking for a stand for my phone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25582762 (the links in that post no longer do what they did, back then).
Same thing happened to eBay, any attempt to cut down on the scammers just reduced the number of actual real sellers, until basically there's nothing but scammers left for large swaths of the site.
Which is sometimes exactly what people want.
This is where ads really break the user experience. When I search for a specific air filter by model number it will prioritize ads for different air filters above the listings of air filters that are actually compatible.
Checking out on Amazon is easy. Everything else from the searching to the filtering to the reviews is openly user hostile.
2) Google SERPs sucks now. Low quality ads at top, low quality results that follow. A lot of SEO bullshit. Information returned is often irrelevant. Users know this and are getting fed up.
3) Google Search tech / product itself sucks. Power queries no longer work. This might be hard to unwind from as revenue numbers are propped up by answering "dumb queries" with ads.
4) AI will eat search's lunch. You'll increasingly ask LLMs, and these LLMs will push search ad revenue to a much lower margin, especially if the goal is to gain a reputation for quality.
Google has to figure this out quick. 50% of their revenue is from search. I think they're checkmated. There's no way out except to build something new and hope it works. That wouldn't be easy for anyone, but Google especially hasn't shown a history or aptitude for doing this.
Am I old? What kind of information. Not to be on Googles side here but, for information in video form... YouTube is at least somewhat reasonable still. Right?
There's everything from OSint TikTok to finance TikTok to archeologist TikTok... It's crazy, and it's good.
Once you find your niche, the information density approaches that of a black hole. It's really high quality.
And I get us on HN are a particular cohort, but is there really as much depth of information? Literally had to help a family member fix their jeep over the holidays and "replace fuel pump jeep Cherokee 1998" is just not something I think Tiktok would be good at. Idk I should try and install it sometime i guess.
And then also, at least i've noticed on Instagram (and occasionally FB), that like sometimes I see something. Forget about it, click elsewhere, and then cant go back to find it again? Vs /feed/history and even browser history on Youtube?
Edit: Is this normal? I cant even search for videos on tiktok.com without an account?
it only requires that you do it.
you don't need to study hard to learn to cook.
The average person can learn to cook from someone who already can do it (usually it's your parents...) in a week. It usually happens at the age of 15. From then on it's only a matter of practicing and experimenting. It doesn't require a tutor, contrary to what TV shows like master chef wants to sell to you.
I learned how to cook looking at my mom doing it and then tried some recipe from this book series from the '60s that were very popular in many homes when I was a kid.
It's easier than learning how to bike or walk.
https://www.ibs.it/in-cucina-con-fantasia-10-libri-vintage-w...
So? Millions of people lack basic skills, like 1/3 of the population struggles with digital skills.
Some skills are basic but obscure - maintenance of a bicycle is a basic, but if you never has a bicycle, you won't have it.
Or maybe prepping a live fish for cooking.
You mean people can't use their hands?
Digital skills are not real skills, they are imaginary skills that mostly boil down to "they don't know software products" but they also "don't care about them" and it's a very very very broad field, many people take for granted their knowledge about complex stuff, but basic "digital skills" are easily learned through simply doing it. Just like cooking, but less useful.
Coincidentally, I never used TikTok, I don't know how it works, it's one of the few Chinese stuff that I really don't care about (but it's ironically loved by Americans who also hate China for everything else). Based on this sentence many people would say that I lack basic digital skills, but I am also a professional software engineer since 1996. Many of the things that are basic digital skills for me, are advanced stuff for people who only use a smartphone. Many basic skills, like using a real keyboard, are alien to touchscreen natives. And so on. TikTok is not a skill, but if it was I would lack that skill.
Meanwhile cooking is something that anybody can do, even chimps ca do it
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/03/chimpanzees-...
> Some skills are basic but obscure - maintenance of a bicycle is a basic, but if you never has a bicycle, you won't have it.
as I've said, biking is harder than cooking.
> Or maybe prepping a live fish for cooking.
If you cook it in its entirety in the oven or on a grill, it will be edible, and will taste good.
Or fry it, fried lattarini are cooked exactly like that, you eat them whole.
https://www.tusciatimes.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/lattar...
Virtually every animal that is not an insect can be cooked the same way: open the belly, remove internal organs, cook it. Done. .
Fancy recipes are not "cooking", there's the same distance between playing soccer with your friends and being a professional soccer player.
Saying that TikTok helped someone to learn how to cook is misleading, the merit is of the person that started doing it and learned how to do it by doing it.
Replace TikTok with "grandma book of recipe" and the result is the same.
TikTok has no real value in this story, it just happened that someone used it for inspiration because that's what that person knew. Coincidence is not the same thing of correlation.
Have you seen British newbuilt homes? They must be using their feet!
> Digital skills are not real skills, they are imaginary skills
So is filling doing paperwork and navigating beurocracy.
We have an entire proffesion dedicates to doing just that, and every year thousands of people get in trouble because they ticked a wrong box in a form.
yep, exactly, that's why I pay people to do it, unless I'm required by the law to do it personally.
One that the vast majority of people suck at. Either it's not basic or something else is wrong ... like how hard it is to learn new skills.
Correct.
The difference is that computing needs a lot of prior knowledge, including what computing means and which branch of computing you want to learn.
But writing a Word document and printing it it's absolutely attainable in 1 day.
Cooking, as in cooking your meals at home, for yourself or your family, is only a bit more complicated than preparing the breakfast.
Which is something that anybody (IMHO) can do.
Cooking a simple meal anybody can learn, just as typing a Word document and printing it. More complicated cooking tends to stress people out immensely. Kind of the same as more complicated computer stuff does.
Wikipedia to the rescue, as usual
Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software.
now go to the average person, ask them what an algorithm is and be prepared to be disappointed.
Ask them what a pressure cooker or filleting is and you won't be.
> just as typing a Word document and printing it
that's not computing, that's typewriting.
typewriting is easy, as the adage says: monkeys can do it and eventually write Shakespeare.
> More complicated cooking tends to stress people out immensely. Kind of the same as more complicated computer stuff does.
Not really.
More complicated cooking mostly takes more time, but it's not really more difficult. I would argue that many people can make cakes which is some of the more complicated food one can cook, but they amusingly say they can't cook.
Making sushi it's easy, but it needs a very long preparation.
More complicated computer stuff requires a lot of studying and you have to learn a lot of concepts that have no other use outside of computing world.
Amusingly I just discovered that TikTok is actually a very good educational platform but only for Chinese people in China.
The Chinese version of the popular short video app TikTok, known as Douyin, will force users in China who are under 14 years old to use the so called teenage mode that will limit them to 40 minutes a day between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. to ensure they get adequate sleep. Endless zombie-like scrolling is interrupted by mandatory 5-second delays. They’re also only shown specially-selected “inspiring” content.
The algorithm is vastly different, promoting science, educational and historical content in China
I don't know for sure if this is some form of Chinese propaganda, but assuming it's true, compared to the content that is more prominent in the rest of the World, it becomes increasingly hard to call ourselves "advanced societies".
TikTok encourages the opposite: so content creators cram in as much information as possible, often speeding up music and talking. Sometimes with supercuts to even minimize the natural pauses between words. The same 2 minutes of content gets sped up and cut down to 30s and shares more similarities with a lightning talk and slide deck than a video.
You could listen to an audio book at 10x speed, but would you retain much of it?
I guess i would say, TikTok information is the personification of the meme of "How to Draw an Owl" quick and short. But does it convey enough information, could a longer form be better?
I can watch YouTube on a television though.
And, just like a book, I can skip the parts I'm not interested in.
Are we at the point that research has become something that should be so effortless that even the tiniest annoyance is considered bad?
> so content creators cram in as much information as possible
> The same 2 minutes of content gets sped up and cut down to 30s
which is exactly the opposite of good information.
A lightning talk it's not information, it's an hint to something that should sparkle your interest, nobody actively search for lightning talks as a form of research.
At school I studied Roman history for ever, it's not like that Roman history is really that complicated (it is vast, it spans a very long time and there are many names and many battles, but still not complex stuff) it's that persistence of knowledge requires time, repetition and going into details.
You can cram Roman history in two paragraphs, but that's not information, that's trivia.
But mostly, good information requires reputation: you can't just take a 2 minute video crammed into 30 seconds chipmunk high pitch voice and call it "information". That's just someone talking about stuff, as far as the use knows, it could be 100% bullshit (and probably is).
I'm not learning Roman History from youtube/tiktok, I'm trying to figure out how to factory reset my parents DVR. 10 minutes of rambling is not useful.
I'm matching the tone of the comment I'm replying to.
> If you don't like what people say you don't have to read or listen.
Speaking of irony ... you can also just move along.
Youtube shorts is trying to get in the mix, but no matter how I try to curate my feed, there's always around 30% bald men bullshitting mixed in (Joe Rogan, Andrew Tate and a bunch of bad comedians). Their algorithm is strongly geared towards controversy, and I guess it works to increase engagement, but only for people who don't realize how toxic and unhealthy it is to watch stuff like that.
Not really. YouTube is a mess due to advertising. You have to wade through tons of trash to find good content.
In this sense, Amazon ads will continue to a threaten Google, but not some future edition of ChatGPT.
AI will very soon be perfectly capable of generating human sounding reviews. It just needs to "dumb down" the tone a bit to be believable.
We will have to face a reality where nothing on the internet can be trusted. Ironically traditional news outlets will probably become more relevant again.
Maybe a future edition of ChatGPT can discern a real human review from a content farm returned by Google Search.
Once ads are added there is, again, a motivation to make replies very long and rambly. Even now I begin getting "annoyed":
Yes it's grammatically correct and "humanly" sounding but all I really want is five dashes with ingredients and instructions for an apple pie.
Given enough time, I'm confident the "Certainly I can help you. Here's what you need to..." will once again turn into a paragraph or two to have more opportunities to sell to advertisers.
The economics still don't seem to favor brief responses.
Medical and health-related queries are particularly screwed. Every top result is practically the same gamified SEO trash with filler content.
I also don't know who told Google to ignore the keywords in my search query and show me a cluttered page that targets "topics" instead of keywords.
The search engine of Google has rapidly deteriorated, but people still go mainly to Google when they want or need to purchase something.
AI can not make contracts with humans and make a sale. People selling online instead of making free content seem to be the most protected against AI right now. An AI can never deal with money responsibilities.
Google's strongest arm right now are maps, where they are superior. Apple is finally catching up, and could compete with Google if they changed some of their truly idiotic maps policies. For what it's worth, Apple could probably easily destroy Google as a search engine, and they have the conservative attitude to make them a good candidate.
I'm not sending my purchase intent to Amazon. In fact I am ensuring I don't give them ads results via SEO (e.g., -site:amazon.com).
I don't want Amazon ads in my results which I know were forcibly generated at runtime by overriding competitors (i.e., breaking/hacking Google Search).
I don't want to purchase an item from Amazon knowing it could contain an empty box and/or defective product (i.e., no quality control), will take 5x as long to arrive, and I may not even receive a refund in the event I try to return the item.
Give me a service better than Amazon. I'm tired of being served subpar everything by them. Especially when they treat their employees and customers like trash. No thanks.