Hacker News Reader

Comment by satvikpendem | Hacker News Reader

Sure, but then the advertising model is working then, at least for Google and the companies that pay them. If people don't want to read a big heading literally called sponsored results [0] then I don't know what to tell them. Or they just don't care because they're not paying anything to click.

[0] https://i.imgur.com/JvEsDpH.png

View on HN

Good screenshot! Ads take up the majority of the space on that page, and are styled to look almost identical to search results. That's a problem for people like me that expect a search engine to primary deliver search results, not ads.

> [0] https://i.imgur.com/JvEsDpH.png

Wow that is how Google looks these days?

It looks especially bad if you are someone who has left google behind for awhile. Guess its the whole slowly boiled thing. I feel the same way when I accidentally see television commercials. Cannot believe how bad they are now.

While true, it's still a user-hostile move. You kinda have to meet your customers where they are. If people are clicking ads without knowing it, that's a serious design problem. Yes, people should learn to read, but the risk of placing too much burden on users is that all it takes is one ambitious product manager to push an A/B test that generates huge revenue wins while enshittifying the product for everyone else.

I'm not sure it is a problem, as it's Google's page, they can do whatever they want with it, and they'll of course do the profit maximizing action. Who is anyone to say it's a serious design problem?

It's a design solution to "people not clicking enough ads".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com